Sony posts patch to ease overheating Vaio risk
Gentlemen, recallibrate your thermal sensors
More than 500,000 Vaio notebooks around the world contain mis-callibrated temperature sensors that could allow the laptops to overheat, Sony has admitted.
The machines are part of the Vaio F and CW2 series, and have been on sale in Europe since January. Some 103,000 of them have been shipped into the region.
It's not clear how many of these have experience overheating, but Sony said it had received reports from 39 owners worldwide of high temperatures causing the machines' plastic shells to warp.
Having studied the problem, Sony has now posted Bios updates which correctly set the machines' sensors.
You can get the F-series update here, while the new firmware for the CW2 laptops can be downloaded here.
Not all Vaios in the F and CW2 series are affected by the problem - you can check whether your machine is by keying in its series number here. ®
COMMENTS
No fix for FZ11Z then?
I have a 2-3 year old FZ11Z that also uses the 8400GT M... is there no fix for this.
I have noticed it more recently, since the machine spends half of it's life as a TV (via USB). Various hardware monitors have reported tempratures of 90deg. C for the gpu and 80deg C for the CPU.
It sits on a flat hard surface... and sometimes the exterior is hot (not warm...) to the touch. The front left underside is the worst affected area... by quite some margin.
I have resorted to pointing a big fan at it so I can watch world cup games while I work in my office (on my various desktops).
Media player seems to make it hotter than mPlayer classic... sky player (in media centre) seems to push it to near meltdown. But according the the checks my FZ (rather than F, I suppose) series machine is "not affected".
As Sony & nvidia acknowledge there is a problem, but provide me with no fix. At least I will know who to send the lawsuit to when it causes a fire and burns the house down.
