Virus on Sony Vaio - Recovery Disc Damaged - System Recovery Problem

[T.Horam]

Hi guys, I'm trying to fix my brothers Sony Vaio after it got a seriously problematic virus and refused to boot in anything other than in safe mode (Model No. VGN-FE28B). I made the recovery discs a while back, but it got a bit damaged so it stops working mid way through the recovery process (when it reaches sony.i01) .

I have managed to extract all the files from the disc apart from sony.i01 (this is where the disc is damaged) but that's not much good. I was wondering what to do to recover the laptopI can't boot from the HD using F10 as it asks for disc 2 when it reaches the same place as the disc failed (I only have one disc) - The partial attempt at recovery from disc may be the cause of this? I don't need to recover data from the HD just wipe it and get the os installed and drivers. The laptop currently says 'Operating System Not Found' upon boot up.

Is there anything I can do just to reinstall XP and then install the sony drivers when XP is back working? I don't have XP on disc as it was pre-installed 😞 Do I need a new recovery disc - if so where can I get one? 'Complete Recovery' is the only option the vaio gives me,


Thanks

[rich912]

Hi T.Horam and welcome.

Support should be able to supply replacement recovery media – Click Support at the top of this page, login with the model number and then select ‘Get in Touch’.

The other (possibly more expensive) alternative would be to purchase a copy of XP and then download and install all of the original Sony Drivers and Utilities from the Support site. The drawback with this is that you will not have any of the bundled Sony software.

[T.Horam]

I wish I didn't have to contact them at 35p / minute! We should get these disc bundled and be freely available anyway