rambomhtri

Hi, Jesus Christ, I thought SONY was going through some rough times in the laptop department, but I wasn't expecting a total shutdown. Anyways, I am trying to revive a SONY Vaio from 2012, model "VPCEG30EL", and this is what I've done:

1. Upgrading its i3-2350M to an outstanding i7-2760QM (already bought it, on its way)

2. Upgrade the HDD to an SSD

3. May be another slot of 4GB RAM to make it 8GB of RAM in total

Specs (although I have 500GB HDD and 4GB RAM):

https://www.cnet.com/products/sony-vaio-e-series-vpceg30el-14-core-i3-2350m-windows-7-home-basic-64-bit-2-gb-ram-320-gb-hdd-series/

Before upgrading the hardware I was planning to update the BIOS and check the drivers and stuff, but as shocked as still I am, everything is gone. I can't find anywhere which one is the latest BIOS for my model, the release notes of the different versions to see what's new when I upgrade the BIOS if it is that I don't have the latest, maximum RAM speed supported, etc...

So... what can I do?

Is there any mirror site or something where I can download the latest drivers and BIOS for this particular model VPCEG30EL?

I am really mad at SONY for closing entirely everything. At least keep all the drivers and downloads available for us customers, the fact that you have abandoned the market does not mean your notebooks are not worth to revive or use, for God's sake.

On 12/3/2015 at 7:28 PM, rambomhtri said:

I think the BIOS update 3.08 totally F***** UP my notebook. Thank you, Lenovo. Can anyone here confirm if the BIOS 3.05 here is safe to install and if it's the official, unmodded one?

I don't know what happened 3 years ago, I don't know if it was the BIOS update or what, but what really happened to my Y510P is that the M.2 24GB SSD cache got faulty and it made the whole notebook act slow and really buggy. I ended up, after a lot of experimentation, removing it and all the problems were solved instantly. So... I don't think the BIOS messes up your notebook per se, may be messes up your SSD cache configuration and then the notebook in general. Anyways, I'm using an SSD as my main and only storage device and it's working just fine. BTW, I was not able to re-configure the SSD cache ever again, that's why I finally decided to swipe the main HDD by an SSD. I even bought a M.2 to USB 3.0 adapter and I am not able to access the 24GB cache SSD, it's like formatted badly or something, I've tried everything.

I think the BIOS update 3.08 totally F***** UP my notebook. Thank you, Lenovo. Can anyone here confirm if the BIOS 3.05 here is safe to install and if it's the official, unmodded one?

I have very bad news, for me...

I've recently updated (2 days ago) to BIOS 3.08. I had the original BIOS that came with my lenovo Y510P, the BIOS 3.05 rev 3.7.

After that update, I'm having these issues, that of course I didn't before the update:

1. The notebook gets frozen or stuck when I open Windows Update

2. When I shut it down, it gets frozen with the red keys on forever when the "shutting down" windows has finished

3. It gets stuck when I restart it, staying forever in the "Restarting..." screen.

4. Many of the time I see the disk usage is 100%, and that didn't happen at all , never. Something called "Service Host Local Network Restricted 6" is what is causing this, and a sub process is called NetBios helper. Nevertheless, the disk usage shown in the performance tab is 100%, but the percentage shown in the processes tab is 50%. I've never seen that neither.

This notebook has been working fine for more than 2 years. And I really think it's the BIOS update whats causing this, cause it's the major thing I can recall I've done in the last week.

I've recover the notebook to 1 week ago, where the notebook was working fine, but it's still having those issues.

What can I do? Where can I get my original official BIOS 3.05 rev 3.7? How can an official BIOS affect my system that way?

It's not a virus. I've run AdwCleaner, CCleaner, Malwarebytes, Disk Cleaner, Optimized units, Defragment HDD, etc.

Hi, I've just updated my Y510P BIOS from 3.05 to 3.08 (everything official).

Does anyone here know where can I find all the changes that has been made since version 3.05?

I'd recommend an Alfa AWUS036H with at least a 7dBi panel antenna. It's cheap and high powered. If you're going to use omni-directional antennas like what your current WiFi adapter is using, be sure to orient them correctly. Imagine the radiation pattern of an omni-directional antenna looking like a doughnut when it is pointing straight upwards - the frequencies radiate out of the sides better than through the top, so you don't want to aim the antennas as if you were pointing with your index finger. Another tip I have would be to buy a better WiFi router with external antennas, preferably one capable of running either TomatoUSB, DD-WRT, or OpenWRT router firmwares. If you want to go really long distances, you can buy a parabolic grid antenna, but that isn't practical for indoors. Yagi WiFi antennas are good by design, but all of them being sold aren't correctly manufactured - the elements aren't spaced correctly, aren't the correct lengths, and aren't made of decent materials. If you want a good yagi antenna, you'd pretty much have to build it yourself.

Wow, thank you so much for not only recommend one antenna, but for the explanation too.

I've found out that the model can come with a 9dBi omnidirectional antenna.

Isn't it better that one?

Or should I go all the way with panel antenna?

How it works?

Do I have to aim it to the router point?

I've notice too that it's only B/G range, it hasn't N or AC range.

Isn't it bad not to have at least an N range in nowadays adapters?

Will most of the routers recognize or provide B/G range?

What about this one, that seems to be an improvement of that one:

http://www.amazon.com/Alfa-AWUS036NH-Wireless-Long-Range-Screw-On/dp/B003YIFHJY

Thanks!

Hi, I use my laptop in a room that is "far" away from the modem. It's like 20-25 meters, and there are walls between the laptop and the modem. The ONLY solution is buy a better WiFi card that has an amazing range and can reach nice speeds (2 MB/s or faster). So please, don't offer me any other product, I'm looking just for WiFi USB adapters.

With my laptop's internal WiFi card, an Intel-N 7260, I can just sometimes connect to my modem, and speed is ridiculously slow, like 20KB/s, and the signal is very poor all the time.

Months ago I bought a high-gain TP-Link 822 USB adapter:

Using that adapter, I can connect to my modem 80% of the time, and I reach usually 200-300KB/s, that is not bad, but still not enough, mainly because sometimes the signal is so poor that it disconnects from the modem.

300Mbps High Gain Wireless USB Adapter TL-WN822N - Welcome to TP-LINK

This adapter has dual 3dBi omni directional antennas, it's N, Transmit power <20dBm(EIRP), and these numbers:

270M: -68dBm@10% PER

130M: -68dBm@10% PER

108M: -68dBm@10% PER

54M: -68dBm@10% PER

11M: -85dBm@8% PER

6M: -88dBm@10% PER

1M: -90dBm@8% PER

I'm looking for a considerably better adapter, with better specs so I can connect to my modem and navigate without problems most of the time. The problem is that I don't know much about all these WiFi specs, I don't know when they "lie", or what they mean. Do you guys know a better WiFi card under $40?

Thanks!!!

Just purchased a coolermaster laptop cooling fan. Temps are noticeably cooler. running only in the upper sixties after multitaskingg and multi installations. Will try gaming soon...

1. Hi, can you do a stress test (Furmark+Prime95) for 20-30 minutes (until the temps are constant) with and without the cooling pad and post screenshots of temps? The same when playing some heavy stuff like BF4 or so?

2. Another request here: when I'm rendering videos with the Y510p i7-4700MQ, the 4 cores (and 8 threads) are at their full speed (almost @3.2GHz), maximum performance. After 1 minute aprox., the CPU temperature reaches 90ºC, and then automatically Intel's Turboboost is deactivated, cause 90ºC is the limit before Turboboost works. If Intel's Turboboost is deactivated, the video is rendered slower. So, I'd like to know if a cooling pad could maintain this i7-4700MQ at its maximum performance in this computer below 90ºC so Intel's Turboboost is always ON even when the CPU is stressed, like when you render videos.

Many thanks!

Hi.

Do you have a link for that sound drivers used for your laptop?

Thank you.

I have this driver for "Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)":

6.3.9600.16384

This one for "Realtek High Definition Audio":

6.0.1.6890

Yeah, in Device Manager there are 2 different Realtek devices related to sound. The one you wanna change is the second one.

First you have to install the original Audio drivers for the Y510P, in lenovo.com. A file named "raudio113w8". Although I have a Windows 8.1 x64 Y510P, I installed the Windows 8 driver:

Laptops and netbooks :: IdeaPad Y Series laptops :: IdeaPad Y510p Notebook - Lenovo (US)

Once you've completely installed the driver (I think I had to reboot 2 times), you install this driver named "gaas05ww":

http://support.lenovo.com/es_CL/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS027444

And you finally get a functional Dolby software

I don't know why you say that the Intel 7260 is good. I've bought a TP-Link external WiFi adapter USB, it's 300Mbps and high gain. Well, it costs just 14$ and it is WAY, I mean it, WAY better than my 7260. I have the Y510P with that card, and the range sucks SO hard. Or this card is really bad, or something's wrong with my laptop. The TP-Link range is so good, and it is super fast, so if a cheap card can kick this one's butt, I don't know why would you ever buy it.

I've tried every single driver right out there, and the range is just not good. May be it's my laptop's antenna, but I think everything is OK.

I'm using Y510p with Samsung 840 Pro inside the laptop, and WD Blue in the ultrabay. I tried switching them and it seems like it is SATA III, as the SSD had the same speed.

Yeah both main bay and DVD bay are sATA III, I've seen that using HWiNFO x64. For those that are using SSD's:

Is it any situation where you have to wait to your computer to load or something? (I mean, where even SSD's speed is not fast enough)

Do you notice the difference between HDD and SSD when opening folders with many photos or thumbnails?

Thanks!

I've just installed the SSD into the main bay, then put the HDD into the ultrabay and everything works fine at top speeds (as far as I can tell).

Nice to hear that!

Which SSD have you bought? Does it reach its top speed?

I wanna put a 750GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD in the main bay, buy a HDD caddy and put in the DVD slot the 1TB stock HDD. That would be a kick-ass laptop. Do you really notice the difference? I mean, my Y510P boots in 15 seconds with an HDD (I have a M.2 SSD, but it does not really affect to the booting), so I don't really care about booting times (5 seconds, 15 seconds... I'd never spend $400 for that).

Do you notice the difference in opening programs, extract files, extract audio/videos from video files, installing programs...?

How did you copy ALL the partitions from the HDD to the SSD?

I mean, can you format and re-install the OS just with your SSD (which means you have all the partitions the HDD has)?

Thanks!

Why don't you guys just download HWiNFO x64 and see it yourself? Easy as pie.

I'd like to know how much impact the cooler pad has in temps. Tell us how many celsius degrees you get using it.

I never watch movies on 15.6" screen, I dont know why would you ever buy 8K laptop for such purpose. For everything else - its a total waste.

Well, I do watch films in my laptop. And it's freaking awesome to watch them there. The thing is that the highest standard quality for films is Full HD, 1920x1080. If you have a laptop with that resolution, like me, you're gonna watch them without scaling, at its native resolution. Now, 1080 is still a "poor" resolution for 15.6" screen. I can clearly see the pixels in my Y510P. So I want more resolution. If you go 1440 or QHD+ or any of those "weird" resolutions, you're gonna scale a film, and it's going to lose some pixels there, cause the division is not perfect, there are decimals. Nevertheless, if you are using a 4K or 8K screen, that division is going to be perfect, cause in a 4K screen, each 1080 pixel is.going to be represented by 4, which is a non-decimal number. In 8K, by 16 pixels. So the upscale is perfect. That's one advantage of having a multiplier screen resolution, scaling is perfect.

But, of course, you're not buying an 8K screen to watch 1080 videos or images. Having an 8K resolution screen in 15.6" means that the curves and fonts and images and everything would be so realistic. But we're gonna wait for 10 years or so to see an 8K 15.6" screen working along a nicely optimized OS and software that sqeeze that resolution.

You know, I'd buy without ANY doubt a 15.6" screen laptop that is 8K resolution. Cause that's the perfect resolution for 15.6". The films would be native, cause 8K is multiplier of 1080, and the curves and resolution would be stunning. But we would need many many improves in the OS and games. So it's gonna happen like 10 years later.

I havent had any issues with overheating yet while gaming although it does get hot.

I would suggest using a cooling pad while running high performance games.

The only game that has really made my y510p really hot is Crysis 3. Though it all depends on how often you play and for how long each time.

That's not true, any laptop reach the maximum stable temperature after 1-2 minutes of playing, so it doesn't depends on the time you use it. After that, temps are constant, with some peaks sometimes. It doesn't depends on how often you play, every time the temps are gonna be the same under the same conditions, it doesn't matter if you've played 1h or 5h, or for a week or a year.

This laptop gets really hot when you're squeezing its power, specially in summer.

Can you give more info on this one? Is it some kind of fan driver?

Unfortunately, I don't have it right now because I formatted the HDD and I don't know where I got it. I'm asking in lenovo forums so I can install it (the UltraNav that had three finger tapping to open right-click menu).

I'll let you know if I find them.

When did you buy yours? maybe We have different revisions or so??

I already have the latest drivers (337.88) also the latest intel ones. I also think my temps are ridiculous as I see most Y510Ps stay below 90°C. I haven't tested BF4 lately, but on BF3 (Medium - High settings) my temps reach 97 degrees after 10-15 minutes. I use MSI afterburner to measure my temperatures. Idle my temps are around 50°C which isn't so low either. (If I close all my background programs I get 43-45°C, but it's weird since it are very few programs and CPU and disk usage stay around 0% when they are active). I'm gonna send my unit back to lenovo warranty and I hope they can fix this (repasting or maybe a newer (/better?) fan, I also want another WIFI card 7260 instead of the sh*tty 2230).

I also have some trouble when booting (normally I use hibernate, but when I do a proper reboot) the disk usage stays around 100% for 5-10 minutes (caused by some windows processes (system, svchost). I completely reinstalled windows a few months back and it was better but now it starts all again... luckily hibernate does it job well. Maybe I should buy an SSD (my version doesn't have the cache SSD as some of you have), but I will wait until I got my unit repaired.

It doesn't matter, we should and MUST have the same temperatures, it's the same chassis, laptop, hardware... There could be some minor variations, like mine reaching 84ºC and yours 87ºC, but 97ºC is way too much difference, and also quite hot for gaming (although I know some notebooks reach 93ºC playing games, some Acer and MSI models). As I said, it should be between 78ºC and 88ºC more or less. Make sure you're not covering the bottom. I'm supposing that your ambient conditions are normal, somewhere between 20ºC and 32ºC.

By the way, use Real Temp and GPU-Z at the same time to monitor your temps. That's what I use and they work fine. I've tried some monitor programs that warmed up my system. Idle temps should be somewhere between 40ºC and 54ºC. Mine's are high 40's in idle. In January I got low 40's, like 42-43. Now 48-49. Notice that if you play a game, and then stop, the laptop is "not going to cool itself" when it reaches 52-53ºC, so there it stops and, after a game session, you're probably gonna have low 50's. That happens because the fan decreases its speed when the laptop reaches 53-54ºC.

I have a M.2 SSD 24GB for cache. My system takes like 15 seconds to boot. I mean, I press ON, start to chronometer, and when I open Chrome and Google page appears, I stop it. And that's about 15 seconds. Actually, any Windows 8.1 PC should be like that, cause I have another laptop with Windows 8.1 and only an HDD, and it takes 16 second, if fast boot is enabled. The SSD comes to play when you're starting programs like Photoshop.

Of course, after those 15 seconds, the HDD is still loading in the background a lot of stuff, and it takes like 1 whole minute to completely load everything.

Anyways, in a year or so, I'm going to replace this 1TB HDD by a 1TB SSD. They are really necessary to take advantage of all the power of a new PC/laptop.

Oh. Well, before that, I would try what I told you up there. If that doesn't work, I'd restore to initial state. If after update everything and play BF4 or something like that, I still get more than 86ºC, I'd RMA, of course.

BTW, to monitor the temps in the games, use these 2 programs at the same time:

GPU-Z

Real Temp

Some monitor programs don't work well and EVEN warm up the GPU and CPU.

Well, I've done also the stress test cpu+gpu, and yeah, it reaches more than 95ºC, which is in the limit of the CPU. But that's a stress test. In real life, if CPU get over 90ºC, Intel Turbo Boost is deactivated and the temps go down. I've played Batman Origins, BF4, NFS Most Wanted 2012, and I've had no problem at all, everything went nice.

Make sure you have the very latest drivers from Intel and nVIDIA. Go to Device Manager, select Display Adapter. Uninstall both nVIDIA GPU (first) and Intel's 4600. Then reboot, and install generic Intel drivers, and then GeForce Experience. GF Experience will install the latest nVIDIA driver available. Finally, make sure that you run the games using nVIDIA GPU, you can select that in the nVIDIA Control Panel.

What is RMA?

The WiFi problem is weird, really weird. During 5 months, I've been using the latest drivers every time. No problems with WiFi or Bluetooth at all, though the range was worse than the rest of the laptops and devices I have. But I'm not sure because I've been using the laptop in the same room during that time. Once, that Windows update corrupted my OS, so I restored to initial status. Then WiFi still was as "good" as always. My ISP then changed my modem, and mysteriously, my range is reduced, and I couldn't connect to it unless I was in the same room. The thing is that ALL my other devices work great. And for now, the only drivers or whatever it is that works are the initial status's ones. I was wrong, these drivers are:

16.5.3.6

More i read about this laptop i feel more disapointment from lenovo. whitlist in bios, crappy cooling, when i play 97C , yes stock, no mods 25C enviroment temp. if i repaste it i will lost waranty.....

damn lenovo

It's a great laptop, with some weak points, like the WiFi card or its drivers or something related to Wireless connection. The temps are good enough. As I've said, 97ºC is an extreme temperature for playing. Something's wrong with your laptop. One of the most demanding games out there, BF4, puts this machine to 86ºC at maximum. You shouldn't reach 97ºC at ALL.

Of course, I have checked everything I know. This is so hard to solve.

I don't think so. I have another Windows 8.1 laptop, x64, and the WiFi range is nice. And it has no problems at all.

NEWS: OMG, I don't know what the hell is going on. I had an stable WiFi connection, poor range as always, but the "normal" range of this card in this laptop. I was looking at all the options of the WiFi card, through control panel. I right-click it, Status, Wireless Properties, tick "Enable Intel connection settings", configure, and I enter to a menu that I have never seen. I see that the first option is about the WiFi bands. It was in mixed, and I select 2.4GHz, and may be with that I could have a better connection. It doesn't really matter, and I try the other option, 5.2GHz. My modem does not support this band. I'm unable to connect to it, and you can't access to that previous menu if you're not connected to a network. Great Intel, great.

I decide to install the drivers that Lenovo provides in a partition of the laptop, called Lenovo. Intel 16.5.1.6. It's supposed that those drivers are the ones that come when you restore the system, so, they are the same drivers I had 10 minutes ago. I install them so the settings get reset and the band is MIXED.

And... again, I'm dealing with the same range problem. I can't connect to my modem if I'm not 4-5m close. If I go to the next room, connection fails. I have in that room a W7 laptop and it has 5 out of 5 of signal strength and reaches the top speed of downloading/uploading. Nevertheless, I'm able to connect to a router I have in one of my rooms, more or less with the same strength that my other laptop. BUT while in the W7 I get 7Mb/s, in the lenovo I get 5-6Mb/s. So there's STILL something wrong. It's not just my modem. I can't believe that a 3 years old low-middle end laptop can achieve better values than this laptop.