Totally confused!

[simrana]

Hi All,

Recently my sister's VAIO died - apparently due to a faulty hard drive. Unfortunately I don't know the full details of what happened as I was just handed the 100% knackered end product, but the hard drive was definately ruined (it was completely full, which is not surprising as she was getting a lot of "Core Dump" errors before the laptop stopped working).

Anyway I got a new hard drive and installed it, with one of my own versions of XP Home - and it appeared to be working fine. I installed all the sony drivers, added Word and a few other software packages, got the internet working, and used it myself for a few days without any issues. However after less than 24 hours in her possession the blasted thing is broken again! To clarify, I really don't think it could've been my sister's fault, all she did was turn it on and do some work remotely over the net. Apparently it just turned itself off, and now will not load up normally, only in safe mode. I have gone in on safe mode and restored the laptop to an earlier date when it was working okay, but it still doesn't work - it starts up the Windows Logo screen and just stays on it. It does not load the operating system and does not give any errors.

can anyone give me any pointers on what the problem can be with this laptop?!

Thanks in advance,

Sim

[simrana]

Okay I changed the partition references to zero and that seems to now be pointing to the right direction. However it now won't boot at all because it says that the Hal.dll file is missing or corrupt. The file is definately there because I found it before I made the change, but now I can't even get onto the laptop in safe mode to replace it! After the error message any button will restart the laptop, and then it will just load back up to the same message.

Is there any way for me to get round this other than rebuilding the machine?

[simrana]

Anyone?!

[Blencogo]

OK Sim,

You need to get booted into the Recovery Console. To do this you need to borrow a XP Pro installation Disc.

Boot with the disc in the drive and follow the prompts to load the basic Windows files. When the 'Welcome to Setup' screen appears press R to start the recovery console.

You will have to log on as an administarator with the usual password, or as the Administrator for which the password should be blank - just press Enter.

When in the Recovery Console run FIXBOOT and FixMBR.

Let's get this fixed !!!!!

[rich912]

If you are having difficulty obtaining a copy of the XP boot disk, and assuming that you have a floppy disk drive, then Microsoft provide a download that will give access to the recovery console. Have a look here - Accessing the Recovery Console Without a Windows CD .

There are other downloads out there that will produce a bootable CD, producing the same utility, but I can’t find a link to any at present. Try a Google…

[Blencogo]

ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT RICH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Every Vaio owner should read this link and make the CD discs. It gets round the age old problem of not having the original XP discs in an emergency.

I have just made a 'XP Pro SP2' CD and a 'XP Home SP2' CD.

Thank you Rich.

:smileygrin:

[Thalamus.]

Hi Blencogo,

Have checked that the CD's work correctly as there is a post stating...

Everything ran perfectly and produced the ISO file and burned the CD.
When I booted the computer with the boot from CD , the boot went ok and the screen came up “windows setup” and asked for a Floppy for Windows XP to be inserted in Drive A and press ENTER to continue or F3 to cancel. See the post2 Responses to “Recovery console for those without an XP disk” here...

[rich912]

Have checked that the CD's work correctly as there is a post stating...

Hence my reference to “assuming that you have a floppy disk drive”. Although I haven’t tried the floppies I am assured (by someone that has) that they do work….

EDIT: I would be interested to know whether your CD’s work Blencogo….