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Hi! My MZ-R91 is making ugly mechanical noises during playback. The other day I resurrected it from a box in our cellar. It makes a very loud mechanical noise when I play minidiscs (any of the 72 discs that I own). There are two kinds of noise: one intermittent at regular intervals during playback when powered by battery, and one constant during playback when powered by original Sony wall-wart (though sometimes there is about 50 seconds of initial silence before the constant mechanical noise begins, see 2a below). The unit’s been in a box in the basement for about 10 years, and I can remember that back in the days there was the intermittent noise (1) when powered by battery, but I can’t remember the constant noise (2) when powered by wall-wart. And I don’t think it made any noise at all when I bought it new in 2000. I have made a few recordings of the two noises, one could be normal but the second I think is not: 1) The first sounds as if a motor is revving up and then down after a few seconds. The whole thing lasts 10 seconds. This sound can be heard when I put in a minidisc into the unit and also when navigating between tracks, so I am thinking it could be normal. However, this revving up/down comes back at regular intervals every 50 seconds during playback when powered by battery. Then the unit goes silent for another 50 seconds before it revs up/down again, and so on. It is irritating because you can hear the revving through the music. 2) The second sound is the most irritating and it appears only when the unit is powered by wall-wart. Basically, after the initial 10 second revving when initiating playback, it never revs down but keeps revving through the entire playback session. 2a) A peculiarity when powered by wall-wart: when I stop playback the revving sound is heard before the unit comes to a halt. However, if I immediately re-initiate playback the unit will play silently for 50 seconds, after which it revs up, but instead of revving down after 10 seconds it just keeps on revving and remains throughout the entire listening session. Every minute there is some strange rapid sound, after which it keeps revving for another minute and so on and so forth. This initial silence proves that the unit is capable of silent playback also when powered by wall-wart, but only for 50 seconds until the first revving cycle. Does anyone have a clue as to what kind of noises these are? Might I be able to repair the unit myself? (I found the service manual on this great site) I would greatly appreciate any help! Noise recordings @ SoundCloud with time notations explaning the sounds heard: https://soundcloud.com/user-514969654/md-battery https://soundcloud.com/user-514969654/md-wallwart https://soundcloud.com/user-514969654/md-navigating-tracks

HELLO VAIOers I have a VPCF115FM since 2010; as some of you may know how good is this machine I bought an original Windows 8 DVD from www.microsoft.com and made a clean installation, then installed the drivers that i downloaded before using Sony Taxi. everything worked terrific, except for 2 issues : 1) The fan speed is above normal nearly all the time. there has been a Security file that i downloaded back in 2010 that made the fan noise a little less (On Windows 7) and the same problem appeared again with windows 8, but the security file doesn't work anymore on WIN8 2) The Led and Keyboard Back-light sensor is no more functioning. After installing my fresh windows 8 i found help in this regard, and it worked for me, but later on i lost the functionality and the VAIO Control center full list disappeared again, and the same trick doesn't work anymore . Trick used in this link : 1- Download the SFEP driver from a french website 2- Install Shared library 3- Install the Event manager driver Last- install the Control Center. Can anyone help please ??