(But try your Sony supplied disc first, you should not need to spend any more money).
Also you will need to go to Sony's site to download the specific drivers for your PC. If you do that, you will get a new 'Product key'. I will assume this is what will happen, if not, in worst case situation, that is if Sony didn't supply Vista, you MAY have to buy a new Operating system, it will be Windows 7 now, not Vista. If all goes well, you may need to go to Microsoft's site to 'activate' Vista, but it's automatic. You should find it takes about 1 1/2 hours, and you may have to put in a second DVD as supplied by SONY after Vista has installed. It will ask you various questions as you go along, (your location, time zone etc).
Your PC will reboot, and start reading off the DVD. Then put the Sony DVD into the drive, look on screen for the option 'Save changes and exit' (normally F11).
cursor, enter, pg up, pg dwn, esc at this stage.) NOTE that you have to use certain keys, eg. (Any others in the list are not important. You have to make the list of your drives look like 1st =CD/DVD, 2nd On-board IDE/SATA. When you see a screen with options, you look for 'Drives' or 'Boot order'. To make your Pc look at the DVD drive rather than the hard drive, you press power on, then look for a message on-screen, 'Setup=F2' or 'Boot order=F12', or similar, it may vanish off screen quickly, but if you miss it, just shut down and start again.
It is five blocks of letters and numbers, you will have to type them into Vista, part way through the install process. The most important being the 'Product key' which is printed on a sticker underneath your PC. It should then be fairly automatic, and you will need to enter some information as you go along. So all you need to do, is to make your PC read from the DVD drive when you switch on, with the Sony disc in the DVD drive. I will assume they have supplied the Vista operating system, or the Sony OEM version, plus all the drivers for your PC. What you do now depends on what Sony have supplied on the discs that they sent to you.
Your PC was pre-activated with Microsoft for your particular machine to use Vista (Home premium, or Pro or Ultimate), and will have had the drivers installed for all the devices, (touchpad, webcam, DVD, card reader etc) on the original hard drive, which you now have lost. BUT because you have changed the hard drive for a new one, the recovery partition is not there.
When you go into the recovery routine, the software is looking for the first copy of Vista, and then to copy it over (on top of) the second version of Vista. The second version, is a copy of the first, but is the one you have been working with, until it crashed, or hard drive failed. Press the Enter key when the Edit Boot Options screen appears (see figure 2). Press the F10 key several times while the VAIO logo is displayed (see figure 1). In the All Programs menu, click VAIO Recovery Center. Once in a partition that you never use, that will be in the condition as it was the first day you used it. Click the Start button and then click All Programs. Depending on the model, this process may take extended time to complete, but requires no user interaction until completion.Hi, First I must say I have no knowledge of Sony Viao hardware, BUT you have the problem which is, when you bought the PC new, it will have had the Vista OS installed twice. The recovery process will continue automatically up to the Welcome to Windows screen.Tick the checkbox next to "I Understand".Ĭlick Start and confirm with Yes when prompted (see figure 4).If you want to proceed to the recovery process, please click Next. VAIO Recovery Center will offer options such as using VAIO Hardware Diagnostics for your consideration.Choose Restore C: Drive and click Start (see figure 3).Wait until the VAIO Recovery Centre is loaded.Press the Enter key when the Edit Boot Options screen appears (see figure 2).Press the F10 key several times while the VAIO logo is displayed (see figure 1).įigure 1 - VAIO logo displayed while booting.In the All Programs menu, click VAIO Recovery Center.Click the Start button and then click All Programs.You can access VAIO Recovery Center in two ways:.Proceed as follows to recover your VAIO computer to factory state: Please follow this solution only if your personal data is backed up or redundant. All data on the C: drive will be deleted in this process.This guide is also available on this website for each model. Note: Additional information on the recovery system can be found in the Troubleshooting and Recovery Guide delivered with your VAIO computer. It is applicable to VAIO computers preinstalled with Windows Vista, unless the recovery partition has been removed. This article enables you to restore the system partition of a VAIO to factory state.