A family friend, who has lived with us for several years, was forced to return to her native Japan recently, due to a visa issue.

On her last night with us, in the midst of final packing, she wandered into the computer room.

“This is probably just a piece of junk,” she said, holding a tired looking laptop, “..but I just can’t bring myself to throw it away.”

This was merely a clever ploy, on her part, to shift responsibility to me, a known hoarder of useless electronica. It worked like a charm.

The laptop, was an almost ten year old Sony Vaio, purchased in Japan. It has a Japanese version of Win 2000 OS, and a keyboard, basically Quirty, but with a few Japanese scripted keys.

It fired right up, but of course, the GUI was all in Japanese. (I highly recommend the experience, of trying to navigate a familiar landscape, with no f’ing clue as to what you’re doing)

I spent some time Googling forums, to see if I could just reformat the HD, and do a clean XP install.

The short version; consensus is, no it will not work, because the drivers are written specifically for the Japanese Win 2000 OS.

I tried the (USA) Sony Vaio support site, and sure enough, they didn’t even recognize the Model No on the back, so no drivers available.

What the heck? If it’s bound for the recycle bin anyway, what do I have to lose?

I put the XP disc in the drive, and installed it on a new partition.
Not only did it install without a hitch, but XP runs like a champ, and is pretty darn snappy. (Used my last three clichés, all in one sentence)

It has a Linksys WPC54G wireless internet card, which XP refuses to acknowledge.
But I’ll pound it into submission eventually.