Last updated: 12 September 2007
This page describes my experience with getting Sony's Instant Mode to work on a Sony Vaio TXN25 (VGN-TXN25N, model number PCG-4K1L), after installing Linux and wiping Windows off the machine. It is based on SUSE Linux 10.2. I hope this will be useful; it should be applicable to some extent to other TXN series laptops too, and maybe more.
Please be careful if you try to follow this guide, which is intended for advanced computer geeks only. You will be wiping all the data off your hard drive, including all recovery data, and rebuilding it using some very techy low-level tools. If you don't understand everything that's described below, you will probably end up with a useless laptop.
One nice feature of Sony's newer laptops is the "built-in" Instant Mode which allows the machine to act as a CD and DVD player without booting Linux or Windows. This is very handy for getting quick access to a movie, without all the usual Windows popups ("Your virus scanner is out of date", "Windows updates are ready", etc.) getting in the way and interrupting the action at crucial moments. Linux actually plays DVDs very well on this machine (using Kaffeine) — I couldn't see any difference between the picture quality under Linux and Instant Mode. However, Instant Mode is still handy for its quick startup.
The DVD player is fantastic once you get used to the slightly odd controls, and I'm sure it's smoother than it would be under Windows, since there aren't countless tasks running in the background trying to figure out ways to annoy you. It might even use a little less power this way. It can also play audio CDs, play photo slideshows (sadly only from an SD card or Memory Stick), etc.
All of this is great, but there's the snag — if you wipe Windows off your machine, that will kill Instant Mode! The pitfall is that Instant Mode is not built into the ROM or hardware; its software lives on the Windows partition. Contrary to what some people have said, it isn't some kind of "fast-booting" mode of Windows; it's a completely separate piece of software — actually a specially-configured Linux kernel and RAM file system — that boots and runs on its own, which is the whole point. But its files live on the Windows C drive, and if the BIOS can't find it there, then you get the message "The Instant Mode Application could not be found" when you try to start it.
Since I'd like to keep this feature, I decided to simply delete all the Windows files, leaving just Instant Mode. Seems easy enough... but we're talking Windows here, so of course it had to be harder. Suffice to say that I spent a week messing about with Windows recovery and Linux installs trying to figure this out. This has been an immensely painful and trying experience (mainly the Windows recovery part, which takes close to a day), but it seems to work now. The good news for you is that I think I've sussed it, and here are the results.
As shipped, the first partiton on the hard disk is the Sony recovery partition, which (if I remember right) is 6 gigs or so; the remainder is the Windows C drive. The basic plan is to delete everything off the Windows C partition except the 200 meg you need for Instant Mode, then resize the partition down. This leaves the Sony recovery partition, which I used as a swap partition. Probably you could delete this partition too, but I never tried.
It seems like the Windows partition cleanup should be possible from the command line on the Windows recovery disks, but after several tries, the best I could to was to resize down to 3.4 gig — even when there was only 300 meg of files in it. There are many files which simply can't be deleted, and some of those files apparently can't be moved, so once Windows has been installed, you're stuck with a minimum partition size of over 3 gig. Anyhow, the Windows command-line tools are pathetic; so I ended up doing it all in Linux. I basically saved off all the Instant Mode files; deleted the Windows partition; re-created it with a size of 240 meg; created a new NTFS filesystem in it; and put the Instant Mode files back.
Now that I know which files need saving, you may actually be able to do the same process from the command line of the Windows recovery disks; this would remove the need for a temporary Linux install. But I never tried it that way, since I developed the process below using the Linux tools.
Bear in mind that I still don't know exactly what process the BIOS goes through to find the Instant Mode app. The process below worked for me; if you try getting fancy (like making Windows be the first partition, instead of the second), then good luck, but you're on your own.
Also bear in mind that you are about to put the entire contents of your hard drive through a meat grinder. Don't proceed unless you know exactly what all this stuff means; make multiple backups; have recovery disks handy; etc. I'm intentionally not going to give you super-detailed instructions here, because if you need them, you shouldn't be doing this.
If, like me, you got carried off in a rush of enthusiasm and wiped Windows, get it back. Use your recovery disks; if you didn't make any (and why would you?), then you can order them from Sony's Direct Accessories and Parts Center. I think that you only need the files listed below, but I couldn't see how to get them back without running through the whole of recovery, which takes hours. On the Sony web site you can download just the Instant Mode software, but you need Vista running to install it (it won't unpack under Wine).
This process re-creates the Sony recovery partition; I never tried getting rid of this, but its contents are not used by Instant Mode. In Windows recovery I said no to re-creating the Sony Added Value recovery part (I can't remember the exact wording); this gave me a 1.4 gig recovery partition, which I use for Linux swap. Otheriwse this partition is about 6 gig, I think. I'm guessing that you could simply wipe this partition and re-create it whatever size you want in step 5 below, but I didn't try this.
Step 2: Get Linux running.
If you have an external device you can boot Linux off, this is your simplest bet; otherwise, install Linux in a dual-boot mode.
Step 3: Get ntfs-3g installed.
You need to write to an NTFS file system, which requires ntfs-3g. By the time you read this, ntfs-3g may be a standard part of live DVD distros, in which case your life will be easier; but I had to install it separately, which I did in a temporary Linux setup on my hard drive. Following the instructions at http://en.opensuse.org/NTFS:
http://software.opensuse.org/download/filesystems/openSUSE_10.2/
as a repository (I did it in YaST)/dev/hda2 /windows/C ntfs-3g user,users,gid=users,umask=0002 0 0
Step 4: Copy off all the stuff you need.
The Instant Mode
application consists of the two .pam files in c:\, and the
directory c:\InstantON:
mkdir ~/win cd /windows/C cp -a *.pam InstantON ~/win
Step 5: Nuke and re-make the filesystem.
Simply resizing the partition down after deleting all the useless crud (ie. Vista) never worked for me. Something about the way Windows uses NTFS meant that (a) there were many files I could not delete (under Windows or Linux), and (b) even when the filesystem had only 300 meg in it, I couldn't resize it below 3.4 gig, which is a stupid waste. So, use your favourite partitioning tool (I used cfdisk) to delete the partition, then re-create it with a size of about 240 meg. Don't forget to set the type to 0x07 (NTFS). Once the partition table is written to disk, you must reboot to make it effective. Then use mkntfs (from the ntfsprogs package) to create a new filesystem in the partition.
Step 6: Move the Instant Mode files back.
cd ~/win cp -a *.pam InstantON /windows/C
With luck, you're set. Shut down and try playing a DVD. Once that's OK, you can re-partition the remainder of your disk for Linux, and set up your final Linux install. Here's my partition table:
Name Flags P.Type FS Type Size (MB)
-------------------------------------------
Pri/Log Free Space 1.05*
hda1 Primary Linux swap 1572.87*
hda2 Boot Primary NTFS 238.54*
hda3 Primary Linux ext3 78211.31*
Here's what a df looks like for me (with a lot of music and pictures installed):
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 73418 44882 24807 65% /
/dev/hda2 228 185 43 82% /windows/C
And this is an ls -lR in my Windows partition:
/windows/C:
total 0
drwx------ 1 root root 0 Aug 11 07:51 InstantON
-rw------- 1 root root 18 Jul 28 2005 initrd.pam
-rw------- 1 root root 66 Apr 6 2006 kernel.pam
/windows/C/InstantON:
total 187703
-rw------- 1 root root 31 Aug 11 07:51 initreg
-rw------- 1 root root 24070 May 28 2005 intanton16.ico
-rw------- 1 root root 850165 Mar 14 2006 ivi
-rw------- 1 root root 25690112 Aug 28 2006 ivi-fs
-rw------- 1 root root 2064721 Aug 28 2006 ivi-id
-rw------- 1 root root 1048576 Mar 24 2005 reg
-rw------- 1 root root 57671680 Oct 13 2006 samp
-rw------- 1 root root 104857600 Jul 27 2005 tmp
For the curious, here's what's in that directory (the .pam files just contain config parameters):
initreg: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
intanton16.ico: MPEG sequence
ivi: Linux kernel x86 boot executable RO-rootFS
ivi-fs: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data
ivi-id: data
reg: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data
samp: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data
tmp: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data