vaio VGN-NS30E blank/black screen with blinking underscore in recovery mode

[rijones3412]

hi please help, i have no recovery disks and i am trying to restore my laptop back to factory settings.when i choose to restore complete system from the options the progress bar reaches 100% but then i get a black/blank screen with a blinking underscore in top left corner.i have spent many hours googling this problem but i am still struggling to find an answer, i did have a virus which i removed but i am wondering whether this has had an effect on the recovery partition hence the blank screen, i really have no idea.:smileyconfused:

[Blencogo]

If you press Ctrl+Alt+Del at the flashing cursor, can you open Task Manager?

[rijones3412]

hi blencogo, thanks for responding.i have tried ctrl+alt+del and nothing happens, i cannot open task manager.

[Blencogo]

It sounds like the BIOS cannot find the Windows Operating System which may point to a problem with the hard disc.

Why did you decide to reinstall the System?  Was there some problem before the recovery?

Do you see any lights, screen images or hear the  drives working when you turn the Vaio on?

After how long do you see the flashing cursor?

[rijones3412]

i have had the laptop for 2 years now and it was becoming a little sluggish with programs not responding etc, so i decided i would wipe it clean and start again,but it was running ok with no real problems.i had a virus called ms removal tool which i removed using a program called malwarebytes a few days before i decided to reinstall the system, i have had this virus before though and managed to remove it and had no further problems but this time after i removed it internet explorer along with other programs were hardly responding at all, and then the next time i turned the vaio on the vaio logo appears and then immediately the black screen with the flashing cursor.i cannot hear the drives working when i turn the vaio on.i have used  the tools in the recovery centre to check for disk errors etc and everything was fine. i have been into the BIOS and it is set to factory default values.

thanks for your interest

[rijones3412]

do you think a possible solution is to buy the revovery disks from sony.?

[stephanius]

Hello rjones3412,

it's difficult to tell what the root cause of the problem is. It might be

a) that the virus/malware affected the recovery partition or boot sector or

b) it could be that the hard drive doesn't work reliably anymore.

Buying recovery discs from Sony will 100% sure fix the problem if (a) is the cause.

If (b) is the cause and the hard drive isn't working properly anymore, it needs to be replaced. Hard drives do age and are prone to being damaged when moved while they are working. The good news is that 2.5" SATA hard drives (which is what you need) have fallen in price significantly over the years and you can get a 500GB drive for about £50. The bad news is that your VAIO doesn't have a hard drive access door, which means that you need to take off the entire bottom housing to swap the hard drive. You should not do this yourself unless you are both out of warranty and confident in your skill with a screwdriver. The mainboard is exposed when doing this, so accidental damage can result in a total economical loss. When in doubt, avoid problems by asking a professional to handle the hard disc swap.

If you want to determine if (a) or (b) is the cause, you need to be able to access the hard drive. Your VAIO Recovery partition should have diagnostics, which include hard drive tests. This may be tainted by your malware problem though and might not be reliable.

Alternatively, you can use a Windows 7 / Vista retail install or upgrade disc, use it to install naked windows on your computer for test purposes and see if that works. If the system runs ok with it, you know that the harddrive works. A live-cd/DVD from a compute rmagazine also does the trick. You cannot just use the retail windows, but it's good for testing purposes. Note that if you do install retail windows and depending on what you do with a live disc, you will wipe the hard drive, and will need to buy recovery discs from Sony to get back to the original factory state.

Message was edited by: stephanius

Message was edited by: stephanius

[rijones3412]

thanks for your help i really appreciate it.

i have now installed a windows 7 trial disk which is running fine so my hard drive is ok but i can only use this for 30 days before i need the activation key so i need to get vista back.when i now boot the vaio i get the option to run vista or windows 7 but when i choose vista windows 7 starts up........if only i'd made the damn revovery disks, i even went out purposely to buy the blank dvds to do it and then never made them.

so i presume now then that the bios cannot detect vista for some reason?:smileyconfused:

[stephanius]

I don't know what you did exactly, but since you were unable to recover the system earlier, it's safe to say that you should indeed have burned those recovery discs.

You have two options now:

1) buy a retail OS license (some dealers might still have vista retail boxes on clearance sale)

2) buy a set of recovery discs from VAIO Support

I'd go for the recovery discs, less hassle, plus you might be using some bundled software.

It's always handy to have the factory image at hand.

[rijones3412]

thanks for your help i appreciate it:smileyhappy: