PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Sony Vaio woes

I dug an old (2008?) Sony Vaio laptop out of my brother's closet that had crashed which he was never able to restore the OS. I don't own a laptop (my old 16 MB/WIN 98 doesn't really count) so I figured it may be salvageable. He has the 2 restore discs but not the recovery discs. It did not come with a Vista installation disc of course.

The first restore disc works fine but when the second disc is installed it errors out around 50 - 75% completed. I noticed that the two discs contain 11 folders named 1-11 (among other folders) but these discs are missing three of those folders. Perhaps that is the way it is supposed to be but it doesn't seem logical to me. I know, MS or Sony being logical is a stretch.

I was lead to believe that a special partition installed on the HD contained everything to get it back to factory settings once the restore discs were installed. Refreshing my old DOS skills, I copied that partition to a USB drive so I could examine the files on my desktop (my DOS skills are a bit rusty :-) ). To make a long story short, the D: partition has the folders but very few files as did the C: partition.

It appears Sony sucks in this particular model as found on many researched websites. Sony does sell restore and recovery media for the Vaio but this model wasn't listed on their website. It was suggested somewhere that the two sets of discs may be obtained by calling Sony but many have had less than stellar experience with them. Supposedly it could cost 50 - 70 dollars for the set.

I thought about buying an OEM version of WIN 7 at around $100 but neither MS nor Sony list this version as being compatible. XP and Vista are no longer sold except through various old stock sources as far as I can tell.

My question is should I try to call Sony and get the original discs, try to get XP, Vista, or 7 to work, or just toss it back into the closet where it probably belongs. I have seen decent refurbished laptops go for just a couple hundred bucks more than the software to get this one up and running.

As I have posted in another thread, I have been offered a possible one man gig at a small restaurant bar but would really need a laptop to even think about doing so. I have never played in public before so I am a bit hesitant to spend a large amount on a new, tricked out laptop just in case this falls through or I back out.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Assuming that the laptop works, get hold of an old XP disc from ebay and download the drivers and you're ready to go. The real issue is why it crashed in the first place. You can pick up better spec'ed laptops new for about 300 bucks. They have faster memory access, which for music is more important than the cpu speed.
All in all, unless you know why it crashed, I wouldn't bother trying to fix it.

I might try to load XP on that old lappie but I wouldn't spend much more time, and certainly no money on it.

Micro Center (microcenter.com) routinely has new low-end laptops in the $300 range (dual-core, 320/2 Gb), occasionally less--as low as $239. I got a refurbished $900 Toshiba Satellite there for $425 (dual-core, 320/4). After two and a half years of constant use it is beginning to have some issues, but if you are making money with it you could expense it.

The best bet would be to sell it as defect on ebay. I got 60 bucks for an Acer that wouldn't boot. Poeple use them for spares, the power unit alone would cost about 30 bucks new. If you buy a new one check the RAM speed. DDR3 (1333Mhz) can move a lot of data quickly, which you need for music. Don't worry too much about the cpu speed, a dual core with 2-3 Ghz will do the job. A 7200 RPM drive is recommended, but 5400 SATA is ok for most applications. Top specs cost a lot of money, and unless you are into doing multi channel loaded with VSTIs and amp emulators live, not absolutely necessary.

Hey Keebo--

I've seen this scenario more than a few times. Don't be quick to blame the install disk(s). Most of the time, there is something else stopping the full install, typically would be a cooling situation, or more accurately, a lack thereof. Laptops are notorious for getting the heatsink/cooling pkenum all plugged up with lint and housedust. A blowout of the CPU cooling area may be all that is needed, although in a scant few cases it may be that the fan needs replaced. Attempts to install without first addressing that situation can lead to exactly what you describe, but it is not due to the disks themselves being bad, which is actually quite the rarity with OEM restore and install disks in my observation of many puters in the shop, what happens is that the CPU goes into overheat during the install and that stops the show. A can of blowout air may just do the trick without even having to disassemble the lappy.

After cleaning out the cooling ducts and fins, after making sure that the fan is operating properly, if you still have installation/restore troubles with your disks, read on.

There is a way.

I've successfully reatored old machines like this one by using *whatever mfr's OS installation disks at hand* no matter the mfr of the laptop.

For example, I've used Dell disks to install OS on many different brands.

First thing I do is visit the mfr's support webpage for the exact brand and model involved, in your case that would be the Sony vaio support->drivers page, and then, using another working computer that is on the web, I manually download all the drivers available.

Next I copy those downloaded drivers to a USB stick. I don't try organizing them or putting them into folders on the USB stick, I simply drop them into the stick at the highest level.

Then I go ahead and run the wrong mfr's install disks on the target broken computer.

Do not try to access the internet or anything else after doing that, as there will be lots of driver clashes at that point.

Instead, use the Control Panel to visit the Device Manager and take a look at the list with an eye towards which drivers have the yellow exclamation point in front of them first.

Run the Driver Installer for each of those, one after the other, but one at a time.

Then also install any of the remaining drivers that are on that USB stick but were not yellow exlamation point in the Device Manager.

Reboot.

Check operation.

You may have to have the code from the bottom of the laptop in order to register the OS manually with ms, or it may do it by itself, either way it will let you know if you need to register the OS by telling you that you only have 30 days to do so or the OS will stop working.

This works. But it will not have some of the original mfr's bloatware in there, which imo may be a good thing.

You can even go so far as to *borrow* someone else's OS install disks to do this.

Of course, if you would rather install a different OS than original, you can usually do that as well, say, for XP, but first make sure that the original mfr of the puter has published drivers installs for that OS and model of puter before taking that plunge.

Takes more of your own time, but gets you there...

Lastly, if all of that sounds to be more than you want to chew, consider finding the local mom 'n pop computer repair place and drop it off with the disks and tell them the symptoms along with a "call with estimate first" command. Any shop worth its salt should have OS install disks onhand for anything.


--Mac

Thanks for the ideas, guys. I really appreciate it.

Mac, I'll take a look on the inside for any possible heating issues. The restore discs were some my brother burned to CDR when he first got the unit so that is why I thought there may have been missing files. He brought out some more discs that were not manufacturer named and I accidentally got Toshiba semi restored. It failed eventually citing hardware incompatibility.

Thanks for your detailed information. I might try a few more things before giving up.

That "hardware incompat" message is very likely due to the other disk not having the right drivers for the stuff that's in the vaio. Reread what I said above about getting all the drivers onto a USB stick and use that to install them and done.


--Mac

Mac, I will try what you said above. The thing is I don't know what OS the Toshiba was nor
does my brother.

The thing with Windows is that you need to register it with the hardware included with the original unit. My OEM XP that I bought for a PC that is no longer in service due to lightning would not be registerable on this laptop AFAIK.

I will look into this further when I am back at home and not on this very little iPod Touch at my GF's house.

Thanks again for your interest and knowledge.

AFAIK if the XP registration number is an original it will install correctly. You may have an issue when you register with ms, but you have 30 days to do that, and you would know by then if the laptop is ok.

Just say you changed the hard drive in this computer when you register and say you only have the OS on this one computer. Has worked for me on a lot of computers that I repaired and used the same disk on all of them.

If you just want to check it out and be sure it runs get a magazine with Ubuntu 11 in it. Boot from that. 11 will start up the wireless cards in both my old Sony and Toshiba. My Sony is really too old to run Win 7, and the laptop battery died, but it's doing stellar duty running the backups of my important files using the NetDrive I put on the network as Z:

On Z I have 2 TB of net drive running Linux, an HP media 'monster' running Win7 and other sundry old systems that hang around and have not yet died.

Any of my computers will boot fine from the Ubuntu I got in the magazine, but booting from thing requires a working dvd drive and the ability to boot from it.

I do have a copy of puppy linux for other occasions, on a usb thumb drive and CD.

I've done the same thing, but never with more than one install per license.

I HAVE used the disk from another machine, but entered the correct license number when the option came up.

Then when activation time comes just say it's a rebuild as mentioned.
Activation is not registering though. Two different things. Activation is required, registering is optional.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm at my GF's on my iTouch and have misPlaced my reading glasses so excuse my innacurracies.

I did try Ubunto on a CD and that worked fine. I wish that more proggies worked on Linux and that would cure a lot of my issues.

I will try a few more suggestions before I toss it in the closet. If nothing else, I would like to use the laptop monitor as an extra display for my dart throwing proggies.

Again, thanks for all your support.

LOL

Yes, I meant, "manufacturer".


But come to think of it, that other term might work for some of 'em...


Nah.



--Mac