Last time I checked, sony has not online driver support. Therefore installing the orginally provided OS on the laptop is a pain to begin with, let alone having to roll back to a previous one.
If you have not installed XP on this Sony yet, then I will suggest the following
1. Burn off your recovery media. I know that you are not interested in Vista. However at least you still have a point to fall back on if all else fails or if you change your mind and go back to vista.
2. Look in your device manager and note what drivers you have on that notebook. Since sony does not have the drivers on thier website, i suggest you do the following
- look on the chipset manufacturer's website for the drivers.
- look around for another notebook that is runnning xp with the same hardware.