Can't boot from CD

well-medicated

XP professional sony vaio.

Need to use recovery discs to repair. The laptop doesn't have an optical drive, but I've used a USB CD drive many times on it.

I'm trying to get the lappy to recognise and boot from the recovery CD, but even though I changed the settings to boot from CD in the BIOS, the startup goes straight through setup to blue screen.

Any help greatly appreciated.

W-M

well-medicated

no there isn't. The machine is old. I'm hoping there's a way round it, but I think I'm going to be dissappointed.

fwor

One possible (tedious) way round it is to get an adapter that will allow you to mount the hard drive in a desktop PC - or if you happen to have a more recent laptop that has a CD drive use that. Install Windows onto the drive in it's surrogate host and then transfer the drive back to the Vaio.

The Hardware Abstraction Layer in Windows is surprisingly good at coping with the sudden change of underlying hardware, but you may need to boot in Safe Mode to install the Vaio's mobo device drivers before it will boot successfully.

I've used this method with CD-less IBM Thinkpads in the past without major problem.

well-medicated

I don't think I would be fit to carry out the procedure suggested by fwor, but i thank him for his input. I may have to leave it in somewhere for fixing or HD replacement.

It's a Sony Vaio vaio PCG-R600HFP - about 6 or 7 years old.

The problem is blue-screen 'unmountable-boot-volume'. There's nothing of importance on it. We use it as a standby.

vyseyboy

loaner wrote: »

Could try bios defaults, I assume you have set the cd to boot before the HD.

http://kb.sony-europe.com/KB/Solutions/en/21000_21499/21027.html

http://support.vaio.eu/tutorials/recovery/recovery.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&c=0&s=PCG-R600&m=605

OP said no optical drive present.

well-medicated

Yes, the links suggest I should have the option of booting from the USB CD drive, but I don't get that option in the BIOS settings.

fwor

well-medicated wrote: »

Yes, the links suggest I should have the option of booting from the USB CD drive, but I don't get that option in the BIOS settings.

If there are credible reports that your model can be booted from a USB device, I would seriously consider updating the BIOS if there is a more recent version on Sony's website.

tomsolomon

If the laptop has a FDD then you could create a boot disk to map to an optical drive on your desktop via a network.

vyseyboy

loaner wrote: »

They also said they have a usb CD drive, which is what the links refer to.

You're quite right, I shouldn't post so late at night.

What is the exact Vaio model number, OP?

well-medicated

tomsolomon wrote: »

If the laptop has a FDD then you could create a boot disk to map to an optical drive on your desktop via a network.

No Floppy drive either - except on USB

vyseyboy wrote: »

What is the exact Vaio model number, OP?

vaio PCG-R600HFP - on the underside is Model PCG-632M. Is that what you need?

d900

got a customer with a toshiba laptop that needed a restore
no internal cd drive
it wouldnt boot of external cd drive unless it was a special toshiba (expensive) one..
almost cried at the amount of work that i had to put in getting that up and running i was hacking this hacking that using sd cards and all sorts...