Sony K-Series Question........?

[Purple_Haze]

Hello,

I have a Vaio PCG-K415B and have a minor problem, the optical drive draw seems to not want to close a majority of the time. It has been fine up until now, I can`t work out why, I have the feeling its the catch, as it closes sometimes with a little persistence, but as you can imagine has become quite irritating, any ideas? its still under warranty but am reluctant to send it away to the repair centre, do you think my local sony shop could help?

Also I have the Radeon IGP 345M graphics chipset installed, right now it is only 64mb but is upgradeable to 128mb, what would I need to carry out the upgrade if this is possible to do myself?

Thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope someone can answer my questions.

Many Thanks.

[kee-lo_]

It really should get Sony attention, it's probably a hardware problem.

As for the graphics, nope, not upgradable

[GBS]

I agree with Kee-lo - sounds like a drive problem.
A possible quick fix at home would be to use compressed air and or a vacuum cleaner to blast/suck along the underside to ensure there is no dust affecting the motion of the drawer.

HTH.

Sorry, no experience with the chipset.

[seb21__]

Also I have the Radeon IGP 345M graphics chipset installed, right now it is only 64mb but is upgradeable to 128mb, what would I need to carry out the upgrade if this is possible to do myself?

Same chip here. I use only 32MB. System is faster then. Got no problems with it.

[jammold]

I have experience with the chipset, and I know it IS upgradable, at least in BIOS software that is.

Be sure you want to do this, because BIOS can be a bit tricky to access.

1. Restart your VAIO, and after the animated VAIO logo appears, press F2 quickly and repeatidly until the BIOS setup program appears.
2. Press the right arrow key on the keyboard, and note the entry labelled UMA Memory Architecture Size: [64MB].
3. Press the +/- keys on the keyboard to toggle 32MB, 64MB and 128MB.
4. Press F9 to save your settings.
5. Press F10 to quit BIOS setup and restart your VAIO.

Now bear in mind that this shares memory with your VAIO's memory modules. I.e. If you have 512MB of installed RAM, when you press Windows+Fn+Insert/Pause, It will report only 448MB of installed RAM.

Don't panic. 64MB of this RAM has been taken for onboard graphics, therefore 512MB - 64MB = 448MB of RAM.

Therefore, now suppose you have changed this to 128MB, this becomes 512MB - 128MB = 384MB

Your game might be a bit faster, but Windows will be slower on less RAM. Its swings and roundabouts... To change it back repeat the above procedure, but choose 64MB in place of 128MB.

Hope this helps!

[kee-lo_]

1GB of RAM will solve that though James

[Purple_Haze]

I appreciate the responses guys, thanks for the info on the BIOS settings James, at the moment I do have 512mb of RAM installed but I am planning to upgrade to 1GB very soon, so as Keelo said problem solved.

As for the Optical drive issue, looks like I`ll have to get onto sony and see what becomes of it.

Thanks again!