Vaio HDD Crash... XP bootable CD
 

Right, minor faff/crisis

Sony Vaio SZ-1 latop, windows XP installed from new (about 2 1/2 yrs ago! I know I know...)

For those of you who are less familiar with Vaios, Sony staunchley refuse to provide backup DVD/CDs, but give you a nice backup partition on your HDD taking up 6gig of space. Being the good boy I am, backup discs duly made, but following several international moves, duly lost! Thoughtfully, I backed up the backup partition to my external HDD just in case of total FAFF! Then decided that I really needed the 6 gig of space on the lappie HD so wiped the backup from that and configured it as an extra partition.

Config of the HDD - 1 x 6gig backup partition, now in use as free space
1 x 35gig normal daily use partition (previously C:)
1 x 30gig partition full of entirely legal music (D:)
8mb of unusable space......

So, anyhow, turned the laptop on today & voila... "no operating system found". Dug out old and dusty Windows XP CD from a previous life. Appears to be non-bootable. So dug out bootable Win 98(!) CD which will boot to DOS (old skooool;) just fine. Swopped out CDs and tried XP disc, "setup cannot run from MS-DOS" or words to that effect.

Win 98 won't install as it appears to be having mega issues with the different partitions! (recognises the 8meg unusable (under XP)as c: and will happily try and format it, but 8mb no use to man nor beast. It's then (I guess) recognising some or the rest of the HDD as D:, but can't cope with it as it's NTFS formatted. The DVD drive is recognised as E:, which is apparently causing problems as the setup doesnt appear to cope with the fact it's not running from D:.

So. anyhow, several possible solutions I can see!

1: Make recovery discs from the backup of the partition I have... any thoughts?
2: Make bootable XP CD/DVD... any thoughts?
3: install new clean hdd and try again with 98, then upgrade to XP after that using disc I already have.

Anyhow, suggestions on a postcard! Dont think the HDD in the laptop at the moment has had a major failure, just suspect minor faff, so reckon if I can get a modern-ish version of chkdsk or similar working on it, I'll be able to get an XP install disc to recognise it and install...

Erm, they do actually. You just need to know who to ask. :ok:

I know someone who wiped their Sony with whilst messing around, and to cut a long story short, was unable to access the restore partition. CD was dispatched from Sony with only payment of shipping charges required.

Have you tried logging a support call ? I seem to recall being told normal routes were used, no special masonic handshakes were required ..... :cool:

Mixture, yes will be giving that a try (my "staunchley provide" was in reference to the original lappie as shipped). Am just very impatient!

Ah yes, I agree with you there.

CDs are cheap to buy, and cheap to duplicate, I fail to see why certain [cough.... Sony] manufacturers, fail to provide them in the box.

By the way, if you run into issues, I'll see if I can track down that person to see if they remember the process used....but I reckon you'll be ok.

Sounds to me like a dead hdd. Have you tried to run the xp cd in another machine to verify that it's ok?

Have been in touch with Sony and they want 35 quid for the privelege of having a copy of the system restore discs... Am tight fisted and definitely not paying that.

Have discovered a webpage that has a boot cd that uses your windows XP cd to create a bootable installation disc. Will be trying that on return from work...

UBCD for Windows is the site