FW21L - Freezes during Recovery of C: drive at installation of factory loaded softwares step

[shanbalasay]

I suspected Recent windows update or other software updates corrupted my VAIO Laptop, VGN-FW21L, because of which the system hangs after few minutes of successfully logging in.

I tried restoring system to previous point which made no difference. Uninstalled all updates (except 3 which didnt have the option to uninstall) and no difference.

I then tried to perform complete hard disk drive recovery by pressing Alt+F10 during boot up (without the recovery discs). I'm under the impression that it'll restore the system to factory settings including softwares/drivers without recovery discs. It successfully completed the 1st step - formatting C drive but stopped in the 2nd step - installing softwares & drivers (Progress Bar is at 0% for 20 Hrs).

I tried the same thing above with the recovery disc (1 or 3) in the drive before bootup and the same result as above.

With VAIO's Hardware Diagnostics option during the recovery process, the HDD Memory Test reported that Surface Scan Test failed.

How do I make my SONY VAIO VGN-FW21L work again as it was working for the last 3.5 years without any issues?

I'd really appreciate anyone's opinion and help.

Bala

Message was edited by: shanbalasay

[peshyxp]

If you tried to do clean recovery using the recovery discs you burnt and this failed, this may well indicate a hard drive issue

I would suggest you try replacing the hard drive and load the recovery software onto this

May well be your hard drive has been corrupted hence the error messages and failure to install recovery software

Post here how you get on

Cheers

[shanbalasay]

Hi peshyxp,

Thanks for your response.

Here's what I did. I ordered a new HDD, fixed it and installed Win 7 on it. It works superb and this confirms it was HDD failure (Surface Scan Test failure) as Win 7 wont install after C drive formatting.

I wanted to check if I could go back to the old setup using the Recovery Disks that I created. To my surprise, when I inserted it on to the optical drive, it got ejected saying 'Insert a disk' - I'm just wondering the disk wasnt written properly when I initially created the recovery disks! I've had suspicion on my Optical Drive from the time I had bought (I had hardly used it during the first year apart from preparing the recovery disks and failed to report it to Sony and use my warranty - my bad luck).

Installed the drivers and programs from Sony site but some of the features and vendor softwares are still missing.

Now I see the only option to go back to factory settings is to order a recovery kit from Sony and try the installs !

Cheers