A friend spent three days on the phone each evening trying to get Dell Dimension 9100 work with Vista (wipe hard drive and install fresh install). He gave up and went to Apple store and bought a $3,000 Mac Pro. Works great.

I found that this morning -- don't know how I missed it the first time. Vista has two many tiny, clicky links for what used to be nice big buttons.

Who, me? No, I wanted a computer with XP Pro, but I waited too long. I would never adopt a Microsoft OS before the first Service Pack is released. Now, I get to be a beta tester.

Shame you didn't ask here first before reformatting the machine, I'm sure there is something we could have done to help you.

He must have done something wrong. I installed it on my 9100 without a single problem. I can't imagine someone failing to install Vista and then going out to spent $3000 on a new machine. Seems insane to me.

Are you connecting through a router?

I think thats it!
And Microsoft claims they don't collect personal data!

Okay, I'll ask.

After last night's exercise, the gigabit nic is still not working correctly. Device manager reports that it's installed and working properly, the various network reproting screens in Vista indicate that it's connected to the LAN and internet and working fine, yet the status screen indicates that it's only running at 10 mbs. I've tried forcing both the linkspeed and nic speed to 1 gig, but it doesn't help. The card is good (it works on my other laptops) and with the same gigabit switch that the SZ is connected to. I've given up (at least I was able to get a full install of Office 2003 with no errors, so last night's re-install wasn't completely in vain).

Any suggestions?

The ones I have been to in Utah, and two in Phoenix where my ex called and told me about his experience.

I ran into the problem of Microsoft installing it's own Vista drivers on my Dell when I upgraded. This driver caused a lot of CPU looping and an almost daily reboot. I finally figured out what was wrong when I went into the device manager and started systematically disabling component after component.

I went to the Dell site and installed the XP driver and the problem appears solved.

I would recommend looking for a driver from either Sony or the manufacturer of the network card.

Are you saying that you are running a separate PCMCIA/ExpressCard NIC? Anyway, you may just have a conflict.

Remember that with the SZ you have to choose if you want to run Intel Pro Wireless [integrated into the North/Southbridge] or your Windows/hardware wireless.

Personally I would choose Intel Pro Wireless. I have never had any problems finding/connecting to networks the world over with Intel Pro.

Also:

Since you are having issues, I would [1] try to get a hold of a full – open copy of XP and [2] the Sony SZ XP restore discs [$17.95]. The reason for buying the restore discs and having the full version of XP is that you want the full set of order-specific self-installing Sony XP drivers.

Don’t worry about flashing your BIOS. Just wipe your hard drive, install the full retail version of XP then before doing anything else, put in the Sony SZ XP restore disc. The disc should now “see” that you properly have an SZ BIOS and that you have and XP license and should then let you auto-install all of the SZ XP drivers.

If this doesn’t work then no harm, no foul, you are just back where you started.

Maybe the network stack got hosed?

http://www.pchell.com/support/limitedconnectivity.shtml

http://www.pchell.com/downloads/WinsockXPFix.exe

Sony doesn't have one, and the card manufacturer's (Netgear) driver installs but also doesn't work. According to Netgear, Vista's internal driver for the NIC chipset should work. However, it doesn't.

Yes and no. All the computers are connected through a gigabit switch (also a Netgear product). The switch is connected to a Linksys VPN router which, in turn, connects to my ISP through a DSL modem.

A router problem could, I suppose, explain the Internet problem, but it wouldn't explain the 10mbps link. I've even tried re-setting the gigabit router to see if I could "jog" the card into realizing it had a high-speed connection, but that didn't work either. I think that when the card is pluged in it causes some kind of bug in the TCP/IP stack, but I haven't a clue about how to deal with it.

Yes, I have a PCMCIA gigabit NIC. I don't run both NICs at the same time (though there's no reason I coulnd't.)

This is a hardwire ethernet NIC, not a wireless one (though I'd like to know where you've seen a gigabit wireless NIC -- I'd want one of those bad boys, )

Per Sony, the driver installation checks the model number of the laptop from BIOS and won't install to a "non-XP" machine, even though they are otherwise physically identical. The first thing I checked was whether I could put XP on this machine -- it would have solved a lot of problems. Sony Style sales, of course, told me I could. After I bought it, Sony Tech Support (such as it is) said, "Hell no, you can't do that," and explained why.

Hmmmm. That sounds interesting. I may try that the next time I have a 3-day weekend. I'd want to image the Vista install first, of course, just in case it doesn't work.