I am Virtually Here

It's a good day to be a Sony VAIO FW490 owner. Sony has finally listened to its customers' request and re-enable hardware virtualization on many Sony VAIO laptop. If you haven't been following the story, here is the brief summary: the Intel Centrino 2 platform on your FW490 is supposed to support hardware virtualization, but for some bizarre reasons known only to God, Sony decided to disable this function on their machines. Most people couldn't care less about this obscure function, but with the arrival of Windows 7, this becomes quite relevant because virtualization allows one to take advantage of the Windows XP mode. A lot people have been complaining to Sony (someone even started a petition). Surprisingly, folks at Sony has actually heard this complain and released a BIOS update. Color me impressed Sony!

Now if you are a VAIO FW490 CTO owner like me, you will need to overcome one minor problem before you can enjoy the new update (yeah, if only life was perfect). The BIOS update file downloaded directly from Sony doesn't work on the CTO model. You will need to extract the actual update program (using a Universal Extractor) from the executable file and apply the update manually. If you don't want to go through the trouble, you can also download it from me here.

Run the program and click "Update". Your computer may appear unresponsive for a while (about 30-50 seconds) and the fan will be spinning at full speed. Once the process is completed, you will be asked to restart the system. Hit F2 to enter the BIOS setup page and navigate to the Advanced tab, you should see the new virtualization option.