What's not in your post is the call to Sony to fix your machine.
I'll share I have a dim view of Sony's service since the office bought some 20 laptops of the Sony make. In the first month, all had crashed (defined as not booting to the windows desktop) and we reloaded about 1/2 the systems with the recovery CD and then some of our own tweaks. The other 10 had issues of heat that couldn't run for an hour in a cool office sitting on the desk surface. We finally assigned a task to an IT munchkin to deal with getting Sony to make good on these units.
1 year later and far too many shipments, Sony told us the warranty was up and we couldn't extend the warranty with them. Along the way, someone at the Sony service center said "those don't run very long" due to heat or other issues. In short, we could use them as desktop replacements even with every trick we knew such as setting the CPU to it's lowest power saving mode (Intel supplies a tool for this.)
In short, this was an expensive lesson about Sony's service and support.
You need to make those calls EARLY and OFTEN to get your laptop fixed.
Bob
I have a Sony laptop running Windows XP Home, and for the past month when more demanding programs are running my computer shuts off suddenly.
This happens even when running just two applications sometimes, such as IE and mediaplayer.
I also can't run full virus scan b/c it will turn off mid-way throught.
Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic