media center keys - channel change etc... eHome ...

Ok I bought this outrageously expensive Sony laptop a few days ago and
the install of Vista + Sony junk software it came with was buggy
beyond belief. I was getting various reproducable crashes and errors
(one was "windows explorer has stopped working", another wireless
network problems, it was unusable). I tried a system restore and could
still reproduce the problems.

So I decided that instead of taking right back to the shop I would try
and put a clean install of vista on it from a copy I have at home.

Amazingly that went very smootly and in about an hour I got vista
running and all the crashes I could produce before were gone (only one
device driver called UDX still yellow and I can not find it anywhere).

The trouble is now none of the extended keys for launching media
player and changing channels work. I have spent three hours now
installing various sony apps and utilities downloaded from the support
site but still no luck. God I hate Sony but my girlfriend has her
heart set on this machine.

I see something about eHome 109 Keyboard... Are these extra keys
something that Microsoft invented and I therefore have a chance of
getting them to work without Sony software? If so does anyone know
how? Note I also have a remote control with this machine and havn't
tried that yet.