My wife, Anna & I have just bought a very pleasing new Dell laptop, which means her old R600 will be up for sale shortly. I removed the 60GB hard drive from the R600 because the Dell only had a 20GB as standard and put the Dell 20GB into the Sony.
So now the Sony R600 boots with the Dell WinXP Pro install - though I obviously can't activate it with Microsoft because the Dell is now running that issue of WinXP Pro.
Still with me? 
But! I can do nothing with the Sony R600 because the only options I get after booting are 'Activate' or 'Shut Down'. (Since the Vaio BIOS will not allow booting via USB, I can't do a straight forward System Restore either.)
So - I'm stuck... :smileythinking: Unless someone can offer help here? I need to do a Full System Restore but I can't think of a way to do it 'cos we only have USB CD & PCMCIA hard drives available. (I really don't want to have to be removing hard drives again, the pins on one are already a little 'dishevelled'...)
Any help would be much appreciated! 
Cheers,
Chris
Unfortunately I don't have a memory stick, and I don't know anyone I might borrow from. Poop. I did try a Win 98 startup disc but the same USB problem remains - the computer can't 'see' any USB device until Windows is running...
This is the same with Norton Ghost. I can copy the old 'C' to anything but still that anything is invisible to the R600.
Could I halt the boot sequence by disabling the hard drive from booting and then get to a command prompt? Would I be able to access the CAB files (can a DOS screen read CABs?) in the Windows directories and pull out... and install... a USB driver. ... Or something else...
Look, it's not even 8 a.m. on Saturday morning and I'm still struggling with this. How sad am I? (I even thought about a Network boot last night, using out ADSL router but I've never done that before... plus I don't know how to access the router from a computer with no OS.)
If you can think of anything else Mandy or Kee-Lo, I'm all ears - as it were. 
Cheers,
Chris
I know its a lot of hassle but sometimes the long way around is quicker than finding a alternative route.
I think you're quite right there, Will. I thought and struggled and said rude words but nothing has helped. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet.
After lunch I'm going to remove the hard drive - again! - and copy a Windows 98 startup disc onto it. I am, perhaps naively, assuming that a Win 98 startup disc will enable USB booting. (Ooo, I'm gonna be so mad if it don't
)Cheers anyway, Will. I'll post with the results later but if it really dosen't work I can't be held responsable for the contents.:smileywink:
Chris
What a miserable computing weekend I've had. Failure at all points!
I booted the hard drive in the Dell, installing XP Pro and tired to perform a System Restore from the Sony discs. It wouldn't let me("... not for this system..."). So I thought I'd just run XP Pro in the Sony since I would have the thirty day period before I was shut-out anyway.
But XP wouldn't load on the Sony, giving me an installation error.
I thought about my Firewire-USB lead - and after seeing that there is a Firewire option in the BIOS for booting - was most excited! But it's not a damn Firewire lead, it's a USB-miniUSB lead.
By now I am losing the will to live.
To cap it all, we forgot to put our clocks back so I get out of bed an hour too early then, thinking positively that it'll give me an extra hour to sort out the R600, I decide to skip church (again) and slog my (mental) guts out. So I start at about half-eight, finish about half-one this afternoon, and find myself exactly where I was yesterday at the same time. (Except the 20GB hard drive I thought I had turns out to be a 15GB!)
Unbelievable.
I even spent ages at Bootdisk.com (not Bootdisc - I wonder which is correct?) and everything I downloaded required installing to floppy. Damnit! How can I boot from a floppy when it's USB?
I have now given up. I shall try to purchase a USB-Firewire lead locally, or failing that I'll have to order one from CPC... All this just so I can sell an old(ish) computer. (I would have faired better with the lions...)
Perhaps I should have gone to church afterall.
Cheers (but not in any cheerful sense!) 
Chris
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