Installing Japanese Sony SonicStage on English Windows

Jan 2, 2009 -> Updated links to official Sony Web Site.

Background: You can skip this and get straight to the installation bit (which is a lot shorter).

I was unfortunate (or stupid) enough to lose the media software that came with my SO903i phone, which left me without a means of getting my music onto it after a sudden OS reinstall. According to the Sony Ericsson site, Sony SonicStage CP 4.3 now has the drivers built in to handle transferring music to the built in memory or to an external CF card. I hastily went to download the Japanese version of the software, only to get an error:

Cannot install with this Windows Language. (20993)

20993? Cool! So, I went to the US site and navigated through to the download page. Clicked on the ‘I accept’ button and got the beautiful:

This Download is only available within the US

US only. Sweet.”Ah-ha!” I thought… I can just proxy the download via a US server. So I did. The required download was only about 300Kb. So proxying didn’t slow anything down.I double clicked on the and after a lengthy 20Mb download…

Please wait while your software installs.

…message at last appeared! It installed perfectly and worked first time at importing the music I’d downloaded from http://www.eMusic.com into my library. “At last, I could use my phone again,” I thought…

Or could I?I plugged my gorgeous phone in, set it to memory mode and waited while the three drive letters appeared (one for the Internal memory, one for SD and one for overpriced Memory Stick).

“Right. Now for the music!” I searched for the transcode for mobile device button, but there was no rename/transcode the required format Nor was there any DB management for the CD jackets or other info.

Blast again, tripped at the last hurdle. And so my phone lay, mostly inert for the next three months or so.

Finally, I decided to do something.

 

How to install Japanese SonicStage on an English version of Windows

NB. This does not magically translate the program into English.

Download the SonicStage installer from Sony. Here’s a link for SonicStage 4.4

• http://www.sony.jp/support/pa_common/download/ss_dl_03.html

Scroll right down to the bottom and click the bright blue button that says 同意する.

Here’s a direct link for those who need it.

• http://sonicstage.update.sony.net/v4400/JP/SonicStageInstaller.exe
  

Save this file, don’t run it.

Now, you’ll need to install a good Zip program. I like WinRAR. With WinRAR, you can right click on SonicStageInstaller.exe and click “Extract Here”.

Among the files extracted should be a file called “SetupSS.ini”

Open SetupSS.ini in your favourite editor.

Here’s what you should see. (My file  is from SonicStage 4.3)

[Initialize]
fontname         =FONT_NAME
applicationname  =APPLICATION_NAME
applicationver   =4.3
supportos        =0xf8
language         =Japanese
supportoslang    =Japanese
nonsupportoslang =
schineseopt      =1
mainsection      =SdWelcome
dlmanager        =1
dlserver         =http://dl1.aii.co.jp/...
noaskopt         =0
instssver        =4.3.04
uninstomgver     =2.2
pacsupport       =

The key is the part which says “supportoslang”

Change that to read

supportoslang    =English

Save the file

Double Cick the extracted “SetupSS.exe” to Install.

During the installer, you may see some blank dialogue boxes. Just click 次へ　(next) until you reach the end of the installer.

As I mentioned, this will not translate the program into English, but it will run with full functionality, unlike the English language version of the program which lacks support for Japanese mobile phones like my Sony SO903i.