Windows system disk and Sony Vaio

Voyager2002

Back in the day, whenever you bought a new computer you received with it a set of CDs holding the operating system, so that you could recover from disaster. Then this was replaced by a message urging you to burn your own as soon as you started using your new machine.

The problem is that it seems impossible to do this with my Sony Vaio VPCEH3C5E that runs Windows 7. The standard instructions from Microsoft produce an error message: Googling this error code leads to very many posts from unhappy Vaio owners. The documentation that came with the computer tells me to use 'Vaio care', their own software that is installed on the machine. Doing this, however, gives an error message saying that there is no partition. In fact, when I look I cannot see any trace of a partition on my hard disk.

So: my question to anyone who has had the energy to read all this... is it possible that the partition is really there but is concealed in some way? If so, what should I do to make it visible to the software that needs to use it?

And since this seems to be an inherent fault in the computer (I certainly have not removed or concealed the partition -- or might that have been an accidental result of anything that I might have done during normal use) does Sony have any responsibility, given that the warranty expired long ago?

Browntoa

http://download.sony-europe.com/pub/manuals/swt/Z019/Z019650111.pdf


To recover from the recovery area

1 Press the ASSIST button while your computer

is off to launch VAIO Care Rescue.






If the language selection window appears,




select your desired language and click OK.


2 Click Start recovery wizard.


To perform the custom recovery, select Tools


and click Start advanced recovery wizard.


3 Follow the on-screen instructions.

psychic_teabag

I was looking at this same issue recently for MIL's compaq laptop - it came with a recovery partition, which had encouraged writing to cd (but only allowed one copy, and those cds are now unreadable). But recovery partition seems damaged now.

One person said that HP are legally required to send you media on request - they reported that they asked HP for disks, and they duly arrived in the post. Don't know if that's an option here.

jshm2

I tend to find with most of these recovery partitions you have the main boot key combos at startup to go to first. These are usually f8, 0, or f10.

In the VAIO it's holding the f10 key at boot. Though in some models you have to hold the f10 and "assist" key.

If you can boot up into windows then you have the eRecovery options or in Windows 10 you can have Windows do the reset for you.

If none of these options work (and you've checked Computer Management to ensure you even have a recovery partition) then download and burn the plop boot manager ISO.

Set your boot device in BIOS to boot plop and you'll get a menu to select partition to boot. Select the recovery partition and you'll be good to go.

EdwardB

Voyager2002 wrote: »

So: my question to anyone who has had the energy to read all this... is it possible that the partition is really there but is concealed in some way? If so, what should I do to make it visible to the software that needs to use it?

Starting with this first question, yes, there is a tool that will allow you to see whether the partition is really there, it is hard to say (without you providing further information) what actually happened.

For Q2, Usually these partitions are hidden, so do not change anything at this stage.

It would be helpful if you would list the exact errors and exact model number.

To be honest the recovery partitions are often not the best way forward as they install bloat, I always prefer to install Windows on a clean drive and then get the drivers.

Sony drivers available here

https://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&icid=home|type1_us_en|drivers

Choose Computer - Sony VAIO® Laptop on left column and then select your model.

Then for Win7 check the Windows licence label on your Sony Vaio, it may be located under the battery, Then check the version (32 / 64 bit, home, professional etc)

Then go download Windows7 here, you WILL need the product key from that label.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows7

Now to view whether the recovery partition is still there you can download this

https://www.partitionwizard.com

You can create a bootable USB or Bootable CD (you may need to go into bios (press F2 or Del key at boot) to change boot order to look on USB and CD before hard disk)

https://www.partitionwizard.com/faqvideo/how-to-build-free-bootable-partition-manager-with-pwfree91-iso.html

This software will allow you copy the partitions to say an external disk so if they exist you can copy them back at a later date.

Report back with more questions and/or progress.