Reformatted Vaio FS425B, no restore disks- help?

[MacBraveheart]

Who:  Hey folks, I am a Mac user and know less than nothing about PCs.  To me it is very complex as you good folk delve deeper than a Mac user is encouraged to do.

What model/to do:  I am actually only trying to fix my mum's old second-hand Sony Vaio VGN-FS415B for her.  It has a WLAN switch/light on the front but also came with an USB Logitech nano receiver, for whatever THAT is.

It ran like treacle and audio was distorting.  Tried all sorts to sort it as she was given it and it came to her without the restore disks.  So no option to restore to its original settings despite having a serial number... 

What I did:  I decided to use my old XP Pro disk which installed fine.  Only there was no wireless icon at the bottom right and, though it was connected fine to the internet at my house despite being deathly slow, now I cannot work out what I must do to get it back online and where to fiddle on.  No never mind- on I went:

I manually got the driver files for the right model and also SP1 and SP3 (my XP Pro disk is so old it is 2002!), thinking that if I were to get the drivers installed then I could take it online and then it could update the stuff itself and also to SP3 or whatever.

I also reinserted the USB Logitech nano receiver and it reinstalled itself just fine.

What I ended up with:  I am now in a Catch 22- I know nothing about where I ought to be looking to install drivers (or what ones) to and how (I expected them to be executable but only the one WLAN folder appears to have an .exe) or even why.  I am not normally slow on the uptake and if I were to understand what I am looking at where I'd be very quick to know what to do.  But it all looks like Chinese to me just now.

I now have a laptop, which once was XP Home, with XP Pro (no SP) installed and no sign of any wireless connectivity.

Problem:  I cannot install SP3 as it needs at least SP1.  I cannot install SP1 as I don't have internet connectivity (and don't actually know how to set it up as I sort of expected the Wireless LAN driver to take me through it but it fails every time with: "The wireless LAN driver cannot be enabled.").  I cannot take the computer online and so cannot let it do its thing and upgrade to a semblance of currency.

Question:  I would very much like to know if I ought to just bite the bullet and buy a set of restore disks for this make/model, where to look if so and if there is any hope that what I am trying to do is "just" being thwarted by the WLAN-lessness of my situation. 

Sorry for the essay...  I am a little stressed and just want to make sure that I cover bases and offer up sufficient information about the problem.

[MacBraveheart]

Thank you for this!  I am not sure that it is intact.  IS it possible to destroy it?  Because whoever had it before my brother gave it to my mum (and it was not him) had two partitions and a volume which was very small (probably about the right size- just over 700MB?) which I was trying to erase/amalgamate with the two partitions I cleared.

So-  if I am able to clear these, then I did.

Lots of selecting and pressing of D and then L. 

How do I check if I managed to not ruin our chances?!

[Thalamus. · Accepted solution]

Hi MacBraveheart,

welcome to Questions & Answers..:smileyhappy:

The VGN-FS415B should have a hidden HDD recovery partition, do you know if this is still intact.?

If the recovery partition is intact you should be able to restore the Sony supplied Windows XP and the pre-installed applications.

To do this Start your Vaio and when you see the Vaio logo press the F10 key repeatedly, hopefully this should start the recovery process using the hidden HDD recovery partition.

Then follow the recovery instructions to complete the process..

Alternatively, you'll need to have internet connection for this, you can download the pre-installed drivers & utilities for the VGN-FS415B using the following link - Pre-installed drivers & Utlities

However the hidden HDD recovery partition option is probably the easiest one..:smileywink:

[Thalamus.]

The easiest way to check is to start your Vaio and when you see the Vaio logo press the F10 key repeatedly, hopefully this should start the recovery process using the hidden HDD recovery partition..

[MacBraveheart]

Tried F10 but it continues to boot up XP Pro so clearly not able to boot from the hidden restore partition.  Silly me.  I knew I ought to ask first but since I had asked where I thought I was getting the best feedback and didn't get here till it was far too late I am responsible for the rod I made for my back.

Yes, I have the drivers, the whole lot.  Downloaded them and transferred them to the laptop but they sit there.  No idea what to do with them now.

[Thalamus.]

Another way to check if the hidden HDD partition is still present is by doing the following..

Click Start then click Control panel.

In Control Panel click on Performance and Maintenance, then click on Administrative Tools and finally click on Computer Management..

A new window should open click on Disk Management and maximise the window.

The recovery partition should be an EISA configuration, check the capacity and Free space quoted.

[MacBraveheart]

OK- sorry for the delay, everyone wants a piece of me tonight and I am feeding the dog, talking to the hubby on the house phone while texting my old professor AND trying to deal with this in time for tomorrow.

I managed to follow your instructions beautifully, even the unwritten.

It occurred to me that since you never mentioned what to do with the drivers the installation of said drivers could not be too hard.  I have moved forward with that and got BOTH WirelessLANs installed.  It can see the hub I have.  Only when I select it and then click in the wireless key box it deselects the hub its sees.  Meaning when I connect nothing happens and the speech bubble just pops up again with the message that it can see the hub (it actually sees three and I live in the back of beyond so I am not sure what it is seeing unless it is seeing my MacBook Pro and my iPhone as "hubs"?!)

Then I followed your instructions here and found- one NTFS partition only, C:.  It is healthy and sitting at 95% free.  Meh...  No restore, right?  I cannot see where a "hidden" one would be "hiding" and since F10 doesn't conjure it I believe I was very thorough and "reformatted" it away. 

OK- I will have to do this manually and see how I get on with the current installation.  Then, I can still buy my mum a restore disk set, surely?

[thumper1973]

carnt help you with much of the above but once you get it up and running you can create your own recovery disc

[Thalamus.]

MacBraveheart wrote:
OK- sorry for the delay, everyone wants a piece of me tonight and I am feeding the dog, talking to the hubby on the house phone while texting my old professor AND trying to deal with this in time for tomorrow.

I managed to follow your instructions beautifully, even the unwritten.
It occurred to me that since you never mentioned what to do with the drivers the installation of said drivers could not be too hard.  I have moved forward with that and got BOTH WirelessLANs installed.  It can see the hub I have.  Only when I select it and then click in the wireless key box it deselects the hub its sees.  Meaning when I connect nothing happens and the speech bubble just pops up again with the message that it can see the hub (it actually sees three and I live in the back of beyond so I am not sure what it is seeing unless it is seeing my MacBook Pro and my iPhone as "hubs"?!)
Then I followed your instructions here and found- one NTFS partition only, C:.  It is healthy and sitting at 95% free.  Meh...  No restore, right?  I cannot see where a "hidden" one would be "hiding" and since F10 doesn't conjure it I believe I was very thorough and "reformatted" it away.  

Yes it oes seem as thought the recovery parttion has been removed..:smileysad:

However it looks like you are making progress installing the drivers & utilties..

From memory I think the Pre-installed utilties for this model are in numeric folders, if I'm correct install in that order..

MacBraveheart wrote:
OK- I will have to do this manually and see how I get on with the current installation.  Then, I can still buy my mum a restore disk set, surely?

If you are still havingh problems or if you want to have the  programs that came pre-installed then yes you can purchase a set of recovery disc's via vaio support - Contact Vaio Support

[Thalamus.]

thumper1973 wrote:
carnt help you with much of the above but once you get it up and running you can create your own recovery disc

Hi Thumper,

unfortunately as the original hidden HDD recovery partition has been removed it would not be possible to create a set of recovery disc's in this instance..:smileysad: