Reinstalling XP on a Sony Vaio

A

alansoldlaptop

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Sony has now withdrawn support and did not provide Windows disks when the laptop was purchased.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
 
Thanks to you (and also Mike Walsh) it is up and running again.
Much to do but looking okay so far. Fantastic!

Incidentally I did find the reason why my System Reinstall disk won't load:

I recall updating the bios early on - a Sony fix to prevent the fan from running continuously. What I didn't know was that a later update was issued to prevent the possibility of a more serious problem - the Machine Name and Serial Number could vanish from the bios. The fix for that involved returning the machine to Sony, which is no longer an option. That has happened to my bios and it does prevent Reinstall disks from working. I am nervously wondering what else will fail without that info in the bios. Fingers crossed.

Minor issues:

The link in #3 to https://the-eye.eu/public/MSDN/Windows XP/ returns 404: NOT FOUND

I wasn't able to download drivers from http://sonyvaiodriver.com/category/sony-vaio-vgn-bx196vp-drivers/
Click on any link and nothing happens. A pity as it probably has all the latest versions. I'm using W10/Edge and I notice the site is ftp - is there some setting I need to use?
 
alansoldlaptop said:
Thanks to you (and also Mike Walsh) it is up and running again.
Much to do but looking okay so far. Fantastic!

Incidentally I did find the reason why my System Reinstall disk won't load:

I recall updating the bios early on - a Sony fix to prevent the fan from running continuously. What I didn't know was that a later update was issued to prevent the possibility of a more serious problem - the Machine Name and Serial Number could vanish from the bios. The fix for that involved returning the machine to Sony, which is no longer an option. That has happened to my bios and it does prevent Reinstall disks from working. I am nervously wondering what else will fail without that info in the bios. Fingers crossed.

Minor issues:

The link in #3 to https://the-eye.eu/public/MSDN/Windows XP/ returns 404: NOT FOUND

I wasn't able to download drivers from http://sonyvaiodriver.com/category/sony-vaio-vgn-bx196vp-drivers/
Click on any link and nothing happens. A pity as it probably has all the latest versions. I'm using W10/Edge and I notice the site is ftp - is there some setting I need to use?
Click to expand...
I too couldn't download the same individual drivers. The ftp site just vanished. :( However, the filenames are still able to be seen and you can search them individually to find other sites that have the same files.
 
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