After sitting unused for about 7 years my Sony Vaio (VGN-BX196VP) suffered a hard disk failure when powered off after the first boot. Prior to then it had been totally trouble-free. C'est la vie. Sony has now withdrawn support and did not provide Windows disks when the laptop was purchased. Instead there is a (now inaccessible) hidden partion designed to restore the machine to 'ex factory', thereby losing all data and updates. A utility enabled this partition to be saved to DVDs, one for 'System' and a second for 'Applications'. I burned the DVDs soon after purchase so I thought I was covered in the event of a disk failure but the restore process fails with no information given, just the message 'check model number OK'. Clicking OK just restarts the loop. The DVDs are error-free. I guess there is a check to prevent them being used to restore to a different machine. The only possible changes made to my laptop since the DVDs were made are: new battery, RAM increased from 512Mb to 1Gb and now a new hard disk. The new disk has zero bad sectors and is the same make, model and size as the original. So you can guess I am pretty disappointed having done what I could to provide for this situation only to find that the restore fails with no clue as to why. I have managed to recover some files from the old disk, including the 'Drivers' folder, but it has too many bad sectors to be any use going forward. The laptop has a Windows COA on the underside. Could this be used to activate a generic OEM Windows XP? I would be very grateful for suggestions as to how to proceed. Thanks! Alan