Hi.
I was wondering if someone could offer me some advice. I bought the AR21S over the Christmas period and i have encountered a number of problems, some of which have been mentioned on this forum in the past and others which have not.
Firstly, i have been a laptop user for 6 years and i tend to update once every 2 years. I regard myself as being technically sound when it comes to windows, software etc. However, i dont seem to be able to find any solutions. I havent done anything usual with my laptop. So far i have installed Microsoft Office and thats pretty much it other than the software that comes pre-installed.
1. In area's where my wireless signal is weak, when i get disconnected for a second or two for whatever reason, the notebook seems to have trouble automatically reconnecting. Worse still, i can see the wireless icon in the taskbar, but i cannot click on it with either the left or the right mouse button, therefore i cannot access the properties to manually connect. Once this has happened, it appears to be directly related to point's 2 & 3 - the slowing down of my machine and then inabilty to shut down the notebook without experiencing problems.
2. The notebook appears to be running incredibly slowly; in fact, slower than my old HP Pavillion with 512mb ram. Yet i have virtually nothing on the Vaio. As an example, if i try to open Microsoft word, i have to wait something like 7 minutes for it to open, if it opens at all. Yet Microsoft Outlook runs like the wind and if i click "new message", Word loads up as my default mail editor without any problems whatsoever. This could possibly be related to the pre-installed Norton products, as the software i am having problems opening stop completely when Norton scans whatever document i am trying to open. A "clean" opening of software (i.e. loading up Microsoft Excel via the icon, rather than clicking on a document and it being opened automatically) also creates a 7 minute delay in opening the program.
3. I cannot for the life of me shut down the laptop, hibernate it, put it into standby mode, wthout something going wrong. I'll be honest, this happens about 90% of the time. Even after a restart (which seems to work reasonably well) i still have problems shutting down, hibernating etc.
The most common errors are the following:
* Not enough resources to complete the API - Seems strange to me... i have nothing open and task manager shows no applications are running, just the usual processes.
* The device driver for the Intel(R) Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Network connection device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications (nothing is open!). If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver.
Unfortunately, this puts me in a difficult situation, as the only reliable way of turning off the Vaio is to hold the power button for several seconds, which is just 'rude'!
4. I have a Kingston DataTraveller II memory stick. When inserted into the USB port the icon appears in MY Computer, yet when i try to access it i get a message along the lines of "please insert disk in drive E". The stick contains important documents from my old laptop, which can be accessed fine through any other PC or laptop. Why is this?
5. I have following instructions to "update my vaio" as prompted in the taskbar and downloaded (and installed) all the updates, yet if i return to the webpage it keeps saying that i need to install one more update, yet it appears to be an older version of what has already been installed - and this is apparent on the update website as there are 2 updates for the same thing (cant remember which, sorry)
Thank you in advance for your assistance. As you can see, i really need it!
