Sony Vaio - Bios Locked To Pre-Installed OS - WTF!

[gcarter]

I purchased a Sony Vaio (VGN-AR11S) late last year (its a kick ass machine by the way) and am very very happy with it.

The machine came pre-installed with XP Media Centre Edition and a whole pile of other software goodies. Anyway, I decided recently to format and install Xp Pro.... this is where the problem starts...

Wacking in xp pro bootable disk and starting the machine... the normal xp install screen flashes away, until it prompts you to continue with the installation. The next screen prompted me that it could not detect any hard drives?!

Hmmm, went back to the bios screen and it was showing x2 shiny 100gb drives. So... I pulled out the sony recovery manual and followed steps to remove the raid-setup... tried xp disk again... still no hard drives found.

Anyway... to cut a long story short, I phoned the Sony Vaio support line, and explained what I was trying to do. The guy I spoke to was exceptionally knowledgeable and explained that my machine (and a few others) had been designed not to allow any other versions of the xp operation system to be installed, other than the factory default (media centre) and Vista! Reason for this, was previous customers tinkering and then running into problems!

I went off on a rant, saying that I had spent all that money on a machine, to be told that I could not customize it with another version of XP...and was told... yes that is correct, you can have either media centre or vista

That sucks! Don't get me wrong here... though Media Centre is fine and im chuffed to bits with the laptop... I'm at a loss how sony can accomplish this?!(some sort of bios lock perhaps).... and my question is... could there be a way around this?

[Thalamus.]

Anyway... to cut a long story short, I phoned the Sony Vaio support line, and explained what I was trying to do. The guy I spoke to was exceptionally knowledgeable and explained that my machine (and a few others) had been designed not to allow any other versions of the xp operation system to be installed, other than the factory default (media centre) and Vista! Reason for this, was previous customers tinkering and then running into problems!

I went off on a rant, saying that I had spent all that money on a machine, to be told that I could not customize it with another version of XP...and was told... yes that is correct, you can have either media centre or vista

That sucks! Don't get me wrong here... though Media Centre is fine and im chuffed to bits with the laptop... I'm at a loss how sony can accomplish this?!(some sort of bios lock perhaps).... and my question is... could there be a way around this?

Hi Gcarter,

The reason you are unable to install is because windows XP does not have the drivers needed for your SATA hard drives, therefore Windows setup cannot recognise the hard drive.

Have a look at Blencogo's post here..

[gcarter]

Wow... thanks for the fast reply! Will do some reading and get back to you with how I get on...

[Blencogo]

Hi gcarter and welcome to Club Vaio.

The guy I spoke to was exceptionally knowledgeable and explained that my machine (and a few others) had been designed not to allow any other versions of the xp operation system to be installed,

Exceptionally knowledgeable I'm afraid you have been told absolute rubbish.

You will need the RAID/SATA drivers and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager available to install.

I'm at work at the moment but will post some links when I get home - Intel make an excellent downloadable utility to create a floppy disc for this purpose. If you are in a rush - Google for 'Intel Matrix Storage Manager downloads'.

[gcarter]

Hey Blencogo, thank you for your advise. This is my current state of progress.

I found the Intel Matrix Storage Manager disk utility on intels site, downloaded and created a floppy. Then restarted my laptop (Vaio VGN-AR11S) and booted from the xp pro installation disk (pressing f6). When the installation asked me for additional drivers, I was presented with a large 'drivers' list to choose from (ranging from desktop/server/mobile etc). I scrolled down and selected the first 'mobile' driver (there were others) and fortunately this worked... the xp install disk saw my hard disks - and am curretnly installing xp as I type this reply.

The one thing I'm a little unsure of now, is that before formatting, I copied the 'sata' drivers from the laptop (within the C:\drivers) folder. Where do I use these / or should I say how do I install them?

[Blencogo]

Hi gcarter,

Sounds like you've cracked it before I got home!!

The SATA/RAID drivers must be loaded OK or you wouldn't be able to use the drives.