VGN-A417M Recovery Dilema

[Seveer]

Hello Everyone ... I think I may be in a bit of a pickle!!

I was attempting to recover my Vaio back to it's original format when I received the following message whilst running the recovery disk.

File pcmcia.sys caused an unexpected error (4096)at line 5964 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\setup.c.

After pressing a key to continue I was informed setup had failed and I needed to press another key to restart. After I had done this I received the following message.

File \i386\system32\biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. The error code is 4096 setup cannot continue.

After pressing a key to continue there is a black screen with a solitary white flashing cursor. Despite repeating this process many times the end result is always the same. I have tried making a copy of the recovery disk and tried to boot from that ... apart from some rather vigorous noises from the DVD drive nothing else happens.

When I press F10 at startup to recover from the HDD I get the following message.

Cannot perform the recovery because the image for the recovery file cannot be found.


Can anyone out there throw me a lifeline?

Thanks in advance
Seveer

[Blencogo]

Hi Seveer and welcome

It sounds like you have corrupt files on your Recovery Disc and a corrupt or deleted Recovery Partition.

I presume you have no operating system installed so a repair cannot be run from a borrowerd XP installation disc, the only way forward is to contact Sony Support and see if they will sell you a set of Recovery Discs.

[Seveer]

Hi Blencogo, Thanks for the welcome!

Is there a set procedure for contacting Sony to obtain recovery discs ... are they usually readily available or is it a bit of a battle?

Also, can you offer an explanation as to why a copy of my recovery disc doesn't do anything at all when booted up with the Vaio but my original does try before ultimately failing?

cheers

Seveer

[Blencogo]

Hi Seveer,

It is possible that your DVD Drive is having a problem reading discs and giving read errors. What make of disc have you used for the copy of the Recovery Discs? Can you borrow a Microsoft XP Installation Discand check that boots successfully.

We would usually recommend DVD+R and Sony, TDK or Verbatim Discs.

If that does not work you can contact Sony Support by entering your Vaio's details here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/contacts/phone.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VGN-A417M

You will have to use the premium rate phone number as you are out of warranty. I would expect them to have discs available.

[Seveer]

Hi Blencogo,

Well, would you believe it ... I was copying my orginal recovery disc on to a Sony DVD+RW disc and trying to recover my Vaio with it. All it would do was spin in the drive for ages without actually doing anything. Following your advice I went and bought some Verbatim DVD+R discs and copied it to that ... Vaio recovered at the first time of asking.

Thanks for your help

Seveer

[Blencogo]

Well done Seveer.

I seem to recall that RW discs are not supported as Recovery Discs.