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
I'm sorry to hear that you gave up, because I think you came within a whisker. It's probably my fault for not making things clearer.
I had not meant to imply that the USB drivers would enable you to boot via the USB; merely that the USB would be recognised when you were at a dos prompt.
The fact that you got 'Operating system not found' was simply that the laptop was trying to boot from the hard drive and found no operating system on it. It would not have tried to boot from the USB, since that is not enabled in the bios. But you should have been able to boot into dos, assuming you were using a bootable floppy.
What you then needed to do was to navigate to the USB drive and start the recovery disc running (usually something like 'autorun.exe' - you can find out what by looking in 'autorun.inf').
Maybe next time.
Don't be sorry for anything, keypusher! It's helped...
To cut a long story short, I've got the laptop back - but now I get a 'Target USB device not found' (and another - 'ASPI Manager not installed')
FYI - I've done a complete install of DOS 6!
If ANYONE can help me get further, I'd be muchly happy - time is now impertive as the R600 sells on eBay tomorrow. I MUST get this sorted today.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Chris
I may have found something useful.
Check out this link about booting off the network.
HTH
I realized the hard bit might be how the network boot is done 
I've never done in myself and searching did not turn up any obvious answers. My best guess would be starting a network boot and see what it's looking for, then take it from there.
You might want to google for "remote boot" or "Remote Installation Services".
Morning world! 
Kee-Lo: The eBay listing is already a ten day one (two weekends) so, other than a re-list if it doesn't sell, we've already been there. (Andit is a very effective way of doing business!)
As for 'looking for ASPI layers for DOS' - sorry mate but that's way above my head! :smileyblush: The site you linked to is very good & informative but me building my own boot disk is just beyond me. (And not forgetting that the R600 cannot see a floppy drive to boot from at the moment.) But thanks for the thought.
Phreud: (I like 'phreud'!) As you say, network booting is very hard. The computer shop tried but couldn't do it, so I can't even contemplate trying! Cheers for the pointer though. :smileygrin:
So, for those poor souls who, like me, have no life but boring stories of R600 booting, here's the latest:
I got the R600 back from the computer shop yesterday (Saturday). I was under the impression that they had a 4 pin FireWire/36 pin mini-Centronics lead in stock to do a Full System Restore, but they did not. They then took eight days to get nowhere, just like me, but they managed to scratch the lid of the R600 in the process. I have amemded the eBay listing (and the highest bidder said he wants to drop out - understandably) so we may loose the sale as well as much hair.
I took the 15GB drive out and put it in the Dell - YET AGAIN :smileyfrustrated: - and the only other OS I have is MS-DOS 6, which is now on the 15GB drive. I also installed the DOS USB driver, as per keypusher's instructions, and have now reinstalled the drive into the R600. So it will now boot to DOS, but the USB drive is not recognised. I think this is because keypusher's instructions (re: editing config.sys) related to a floopy drive booting, rather than a hard drive booting. Now, I think (and look how far my 'thinking' has got me so far), that system needs a name for the USB drive (in config.sys?) and a drive letter to be assigned to it (in autoexec.bat?) - but I'm just guessing. If I'm even half way right, I don't know where to put this informaion, or what information to put in said place. :smileybatting_eyelashes:
Answers on a post card to...
I am open to suggestions but please remember that I have no way of getting any information onto the R600 unless it is VIA THE KEYBOARD! I am running DOS 6 which, at the moment, can only see the hard drive it is running on - no others. (And I am NOT taking the flamin' hard drive out again... at least today...)
Well, regardless of what Anna may say, this is better than Eastenders... or more real, at least.
Thanks all!
Chris
Just for the giggles, call up Sony support and ask for help
So I've got the USBASPI thing working, & the Di1000 (whatever that is) doing stuff but it seems I'm laking a USBCD.SYS thingy (and though I've downloaded it, I can't get it onto the R600).
I've got a short thread on 'microsoft.public.win3x_wfw_dos' which has helped, but I only have two options now: I take the hard drive out again... hmm... or, I get a new (eBay) CD drive or port replicator/docking station. This is a gamble 'cos I'm going to get the wrong one deliberately ( 
) but I'm hoping the connection plugs are the same. (From the admittedly inadequate photos that I've seen, well, they do look the same - for whatever that's worth, it seems that it's just the plug position that changes...)
Oh my word! How risky is that? Well, eBay have several for less than a tenner so... maybe, just maybe...
Cheers all,
Chris
P.S. Kee-Lo - the R600 did sell, with bids up to £310 - but the git who top-bidded hasn't paid! (And the Second Chance Offer has not been taken up.) Still, it'll give me a chance to get it all straightened out and then we'll re-list it. (But we still made £200 from eBay at the weekend :smileygrin: )
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