Unable to use Recovery Disks or install Sony drivers

[juliaatsony]

I had to replace the original hard drive as it was faulty (I believe it also had a boot sector virus).

I created Recovery disks and everything went fine - however I cannot use them to restore the Vaio because of errors - either before the process will start, or on one occasion half way through Disk 2 !

For now, I have installed a plain copy of Vista Home Premium from my own disk, though I'll need to edit the product key to get it activated.

However, more worrying I cannot install drivers for the following items:

Ethernet Controller

Base System Device

SM Bus Controller

Unknown device

I have searched the section of the Sony support website and found drivers, which I unzipped but I don't know how to install them as there is no installer and the "Add New Hardware wizard" or "Update Drivers" wizard doesn't read the files.

Please can you assist me as soon as possible.

Regards,

Julia

[juliaatsony]

Hi,

The reason I've been having so many problems with Sony drivers is because most of them DON'T come with an installer - as do the drivers for every other computer manufacturer I have dealt with over the years.  Without it, I've been struggling (even with your excellent help) to install the ones I need.

The good news is that I had the wireless drivers downloaded but hadn't been able to install them because doing it from Device Manager wasn't working (couldn't find the files it needed).  However, I then spotted that the Wi-fi drivers did have a SETUP.EXE file which I ran and it successfully installed ... to my huge relief !!  I had mistakenly assumed that since all the others didn't have one, this one would be the same.

I now have just 2 "unknown devices" in Device Manager - SM Bus Controller and Unknown Device. I will dial in again soon to get the info you asked for because I won't be happy until all devices are fully installed and working soon.

Thanks for helping me to overcome some of the problems. I will look for the info which will hopefully help you to assist me in achieving 100% success !