Windows 7 Reinstallation - PCG61611M

[chris_legrand]

Hi I have a viao in which I have i just replaced the HDD. I can boot it with the existing copy of windows 7 (From the previous HP laptop ) but I cannot get it to read the windows 7 disk media although I know the optical drive is working correctly Any ideas?

rgds

Chris

[rich912]

Hi Chris,

I suspect that the new drive is probably an Advanced Format drive – i.e. having 4,096-byte structure as opposed to the original drive that would have been 512-byte.

The Vaio recovery media will not work on the new AF drives as they would have been created before the advent of this technology, but a retail or standard copy of Windows will be AF aware – hence the problem you are experiencing.

As far as I am aware there is no way around this other than to change the drive for a 512-byte structure or to install a retail copy of Windows and then download and install utilities and drivers from the Sony Support site – you will lose most of the Sony pre-installed software as this is not available to download.

Another possibility is that your recovery disks are corrupt or need cleaning.

Rich

Message was edited by: rich912