Installing the recovery CD from DOS

[smanger]

I have a vai z1, and the dvd combo drive stopped reading dvds about a week after the warranty expired, so i can't use the bundled recovery dvd to restore the laptop.

However, i have an external dvd drive, (USB) so i created a boot disk with nero and as my laptop can still read cd's, i used it to boot into dos with usb drivers. Now i can browse the vaio recoverey dvd, but i can't get the recovery app to run.

is there anyway to initiate the recovery through dos? please bear in mind i don't really know dos at all so dont have a great idea what i'm doing.

so, i browse the dvd in dos using the only command i really know, 'dir' and i can see the recovery.exe app. however when i run it it says it can't be executed in dos.

thanks in advance anyone who can help!

[Seawit]

Doesn't your laptop has a hidden partion with the recovery data? You can get it to restore your system using the restore utility program installed... :smileythinking:

[smanger]

nope!

[skykit84]

I have an SZ Series but cant check now because I'm doing a few things on it...
In the BIOS, does it have an option to boot from a USB device?

That would be one way I guess... I dont know if you can do it via Dos Prompt itself as theres no exe from what I remember.

[Thalamus.]

Hi smanger,

When in dos, in F: (F being your cd/dvd drive) do you have autorun.exe...

[Seawit]

Even if it is available from DOS, autorun.exe is an executable file designed to run under Win32 code. The only way that i know to run Windows code from within DOS is to "hack" into the DOS internal code using assembler instructions. It is a bit tricky and too risky to be tried out. It can damage the computer... Maybe it is possible if something like Wine would exist for DOS...

[smanger]

autorun.exe cannot be run in dos mode...

i can see all the files on the recovery cd, i just can't run any of them. when i open the cd in windows, it says click to reboot, then the installaiton will begin. i take it because i dont have the dvd in the main drive, i can't do this. somehow, i need to make the external dvd drive boot.