O/S disks

[PoorFool]

Hi wonder if someone can help - I'm trying to get the disks for the O/S for the three Viao's I'ver just bought. Got to say not a pleasing experience so far. I've registered my Viao's and I tried calling customer support only to be told be the automagic [NOT] answering service that they don't recognize my serial numbers.

How annoying. I asked the provider for the O/S disks as part of the order and they've just passed me through to Sony saying that it willl invalidate my support!!! What cobblers. I want the disks because I want to load different O/Ss onto the machines.

Any bright ideas would be helpful...
Mike

[Thalamus.]

Hi Poor Fool,

Welcome to Club Vaio,

I think the best option you have is to burn the recovery disks for your Vaio's, here is a link to Sony's guide on how to create arecovery disc set...:smileyhappy:

[William]

Hi Poor Fool and welcome,

You will be very poor if you buy THREE sets of recovery disks from Sony

If they are new Vaio's follow the advice above.

If you want to install different operating systems, you are on your own, Sony does not support this and will only supply the originally supplied recovery disk(s), you will have to buy the standalone O/S and then manually install the drivers.

[PoorFool]

Thanks for the posts guys. I really want to use these laptops as development computers rather than as glorified Blackberrys so I want to dual boot them with Linux. The problem is that I need to reformat the disks to get a clean MBR for the LiLo dual boot. The recovery disks will only recover the system to it's current state thus overwriting the MBR reconfiguration (I've been told) so I need the O/S disks or at lease a set of licence keys.

I'm also wondering why I need Sony's support for a Microsoft product. I can understand why I need Sony's support for Sony's drivers associated with a particular O/S but if I have an O/S problem I go to Macrosoft.

The really annoying thing is that nowhere in any of the pre-purchase blurb does it say that you get Sony's Microsoft build with no disks and no way of getting back to the original "clean" O/S.

At the moment this machine is a games machine which isn't what I bought it for.

[William]

The solution (if it's feasible).

1. Make your recovery disks (for future use).

2. Format HDD and install XP from an XP disc fthat was supplied with another computer of yours - Use your Vaio XP licence number from bottom of Vaio to install.

3. Install computer specific drivers and utilities (downloadable from HERE).

[PoorFool]

Fantastic - I was looking for the licence key on the Microsoft paperwork with the works and utilities key. Didn't think of checking the bottom of the machine. OK - I'm fine now (assuming the key isn't rigged to only be for a new install - thanks.

Mike

[William]

Fantastic - I was looking for the licence key on the Microsoft paperwork with the works and utilities key.  Didn't think of checking the bottom of the machine.  OK - I'm fine now (assuming the key isn't rigged to only be for a new install - thanks.

Mike

You should be OK I have resorted to this myself in the past.

If you want to reinstall any preinstalled software from your recovery disks make sure you have all the drivers and utilities installed first.

It is the Sony shared library files that give the computer its Sony Vaio identity.