I'll separate this thread as it is more-or-less an isolated problem.
Following dual booting W7 on my Sony Vaio VGN-NR498E, everything worked, except the Fn keys.
What I've also learned is Windows key + X gives a handy menu in lieu of Fn.
Milo and others pointed me to a site I'd already spent ages looking at, and again, the very specific download did not do what they said on the box. Mostly, they said the "operation had not been successful and to search for", etc., but some said only to be run on Vista. Total no-go.
Now, a chance comment by a techie in CompUSA indicated three drivers
had to be loaded in the correct order, or they wouldn't work. New hope.
My son happened by, and he's normally very good on these issues, but always too busy to pester.
Together we spotted a forum which said the same thing about the order. The bloke gave the drivers in the correct sequence. Hoorah! No, disaster.
Both of us did not spot the bloke had suddenly gone off at a tangent and was talking about another model. Our fault, but just goes to show how easy it is to be mislead.
Soddin' keyboard doesn't go at all now.
Deleting driver doesn't help. Numerous attempts to
load the W7 drivers from Sony say can only be run on Vista.
Vista still boots and works normally. One thing, is it possible to grab the drivers from Vista partition or are they too deeply imbedded? The logic being, it seems the drivers might be the same and only the installation program badly written.
.