[HOW TO] recover bundled applications (like Adobe suite, PowerDVD, etc.) from SONY's hidden recovery partition

DISCLAIMER: this process involves editing the partition table of your hard disk and could (potentially) make one or all of your partitions (and, hence, your data) unaccessible. if you are not comfortable doing these kind of tasks, please refrain from going forward and hit the BACK button on your browser. i am, in no way, responsible for any harm or damage to your hard disk, its partitions, or your data that could happen by following this guide.

it bothered me a lot that SONY insists that we should lose our access to the bundled and pre-installed Adobe applications (Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements) or the DVD/Blu-ray playback applications (WinDVD/PowerDVD) if we decide go the clean-install route. so i decided to try and recover these programs from the hidden recovery partition. below you will find the steps i took in order to dig these useful programs out.

first of all, we need to access the recovery partition which is hidden by SONY. to do that, open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges (click on the Windows orb, type command in the search box, right-click on Command Prompt, and select Run as administrator). once at the command prompt, type DISKPART and hit Enter. then type the following commands one by one:

1. list disk to see the available disks
   
   
2. select disk DN where DN is the disk number on which your recovery partition is located, as shown by the previous command
   
   
3. list partition to find the number of the partition named Recovery
   
   
4. select partition PN where PN is the Recovery partition number, as shown by the previous command
   
   
5. detail partition to check the partition type; it should say Type : 27 and Hidden : Yes (type 0x27 is the WindowsRE partition)
   
   
6. set id=07 override to change the partition to NTFS (type 0x07) and unhide it
   
   
7. list volume and you should be able to see the Recovery volume
   
   
8. select volume VN where VN is the volume number of the Recovery partition, as shown by the previous command
   
   
9. assign letter=F where F should be your first free drive letter (remember to choose a different letter than the CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive letter)
   
   
10. exit

now the recovery partition should be available and accessible through Explorer.

to find the applications/drivers/settings that you want from that partition, you have to really dig through the folders under one named data. for your convenience, i have listed the most important (imo) ones that we cannot download from SONY's website and will miss when we clean install Windows. for each program, you have to go to the corresponding folder and copy the MOD file to a folder on your main partition (say, a folder in your My Documents). NOTE THAT IT IS IMPORTANT TO COPY THE FILES TO ANOTHER PARTITION SO AS NOT TO MESS WITH THE RECOVERY PARTITION.

the Adobe programs have their names mentioned in the filename and are (relatively) easy to spot when you're going through the folders, but for the other programs, you have to go through the process of patching the MOD files, uncompressing them, and looking at the individual files inside to know to which programs they correspond to.

SONY, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that even after going through all this trouble, we (its customers) should not access these files and so has scrambled the header of the MOD files to make them unreadable. however, the files can be patched to WIM ( Windows IMaging) format which is readable by a bunch of programs (ImageX, 7-Zip, etc.). the trick is to change the first 16 bytes of the MOD files from

to the first 16 bytes of a WIM file

(note that these are hexadecimal values). you can do that manually for each file using a HEX editor if you are comfortable doing these things. there is also a free, small program called hexalter ( download) just to do these tasks. the syntax is as follows:

(make sure you copy and paste the above string of hex values exactly and also to substitute filename.MOD for the one you would like to patch). however, this program fails to patch the biggest program above, Adobe Photoshop Elements, due to its gigantic size. and so i wrote a small script called MOD2WIM (see the attachment below) to specifically patch the SONY-made MOD files to WIM ones. unpack the ZIP file into the same folder to which you have copied your MOD files, open a command prompt, and run

(substitute filename.MOD for the file you would like to patch). this script is not as fast as hexalter and will take a while to patch the big files above (on my VAIO SA with an SSD, it took about 40 seconds to patch a 2GB file), but it will definitely finish its task successfully.

once done patching, it outputs a WIM file which you can mount with Microsoft's ImageX utility or expand with 7-Zip. the former is freely available from Microsoft, but you have to download the 900MB Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) just to access that small utilty. i personally used 7-Zip and successfully extracted the contents of the patched WIM files.

now it is time to hide the recovery partition again. to roll back the changes, we just have to go through the list above in the reverse order. open a Command Prompt with Administrator privileges; at the prompt, type DISKPART and hit Enter. then follow the list below:

• rescan
  
  
• select disk DN where DN is the same disk number as above
  
  
• select volume VN where VN is the same volume number as above
  
  
• remove letter=F where F is the drive letter you had assigned before
  
  
• select partition PN where PN is the partition number as above
  
  
• set id=27 override to change the partition back to WindowsRE (type 0x27) and hide it
  
  
• exit

enjoy your programs!

 

You, sir, are magnificent. I'll be giving this a go at the weekend.

Thank you!

 

were you able to get the sony vegas software as well?

 

i got my VAIO SA with Fresh Start which removes almost all of SONY's own software from the laptop before shipping it. so i am not sure whether that program exists on my recovery partition in a MOD form, given that it was not installed initially. even if it does exist, the filename would be something like MOD-xxxxxx.MOD or MODJ-xxxxxx.MOD which does not tell you anything about its content; like i said in my first post, you have to patch it first, then look inside to see what it is.

my suggestion is if you really want this software (and if it's not available to download from SONY), then you have to go through all the process above to find the correct MOD file, patch it, and extract it.

 

Thanks, buddy.
I was wondering what kind of encryption/obfuscation was used to produce those .mod files, now I know it's rather straightforward to decode them. Good to know.

And I agree with you, Sony should spend their resources on satisfying their customers not on annoying them even more.

Sony, Panasonic Fall to 30-Year Lows as TV Losses Mount - Bloomberg

 

You, sir, are a certified genius!

Just reloaded my Sony SA and was just about to try figure all this out myself - I can't imagine how long it would have taken.

 

far from a genius. i just put together this guide and wrote that small program to patch the MOD files back into WIM files. the header information was already available on this forum, although it was buried in a thread from two years ago.

i'm glad i could help, and thanks for the kind words.

by the way, if you (and anybody else) are recovering other programs that i have not mentioned above, it would be great if you could send me the file names, locations, and sizes so i could add them to the first post in case other people decide to try this out.

 

darxide_sorcerer, thank you very much for the great guide!

Just wish to add on a note for those who no longer have the recovery partition but have a set of VAIO recovery disks.

In my SVS15 created recovery disks, I found /data folders with .mod files in subfolders. Using the same method to patch and unzip the mod files, it seems all of the drivers, Sony utilities and programs could be recovered this way from the recovery disks too, just rather tedious.

Sadly though, all the mod file numbers I found are totally different from what was provided, and none are named Adobe

The easiest way seems to be just going for file sizes instead.

For me, I have SVS15116GG:
SY_20120209000000000000000000009\MODJ-186550.mod EverNote
SY_20120220000000000000000000007\MODJ-186974.mod PowerDVD
SY_20111221000000000000000000023\MODJ-186986.mod Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
SY_20120227000000000000000000011\MODJ-188554.mod Arcsoft Magic-i Visual Effects
CN_20110826000000000000000000002\MODJ-182582.mod Office 2010 Starter

 

Easier way: Read the registry for the serial keys. Download the trial version from Sony's site. Register w/ the keys from registry. I did that and everything works perfect

EDIT: Well, this has to be done before you clean install. If you replace the hard drive, this method still works if you use a SATA -> USB attachment and mount the former internal hard drive, then use regedit to load the external registry from the hard drive.

 

@abcdos: thanks for sharing those info. i have added them to the first post (along with your name, of course).

@Hummingb1rd: you can't download Adobe applications and PowerDVD from SONY, as far as i know. i also could not find the serial numbers in the registry; could you let us know where exactly in the registry they are located?

 

My computer did not come with any adobe applications. (?) And yes, I guess I was missing PowerDVD but I prefer VLC Media Player anyway.

The reg keys were located at HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Sony Creative Software\(Product Name, vegas, acid, etc.)\(version#)\Licence

For example, for vegas, it is found in HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Sony Creative Software\Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum\11.0\Licence

 

oh i see. i was talking about Adobe stuff. since i got my laptop with Fresh Start, i did not have the SONY audio/video editing applications to begin with. thanks for the update though. +rep for you.

 

Thanks for the registry location. Found the keys

Update: And of course thanks to the OP for the recovery partition info

 

Well crap...I should have read this thread about 4 hours earlier. My wife got her SVS13 a couple of days ago and was very disappointed with the general speed of everything... it was much slower than her 5-year-old laptop...and this was with the upgraded 7200rpm HDD. She was really thinking about returning it. I finally decided to do a clean install tonight and in the process decided to remove all the Sony recovery partitions. I really did not like most of the crap they put on it, but I would like to get PowerDVD back. Does anyone have that available or know if I can request it from Sony? I would not mind paying them a nominal handling fee.

I must say that the laptop is much snappier with a clean install....kinda makes me wonder why they would put all that bloat on there in the first place if it just makes for a bad user experience. Anyhow, my wife is relatively happy with it now. Her main dislikes are the so-so display, poor speakers, and the touchpad button functionality/arrangement.

 

Well, when I check the Type:, instead of seeing 27, I have a list of alpha numeric characters with hyphens between them. So when I try to do SET ID=07 OVERRIDE, I receive an error: The specified type is not in the correct format. For more information on the command type: HELP SET

Any ideas?

 

that is weird. is the partition type you see among the ones listed in this page?
is it by any chance DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC? if so, your HDD is in GTP format, rather than the MBR format.

 

Yeah.. you correct
I did have the same. The DISKPART explanation didn't work because of the same reason regarding having other type due to GTP layout.
What DID work for me were next actions:

1. Download a bootable image which contains GParted Disk Manager/Editor (is a good and user friendly GUI-based disk manager. I've made my instructions according this tool).
   You can download it at gparted.sourceforge.net/ or download Hirens BootCD (which contains more useful tool) - the-link
2. Reboot, BIOS, change UEFI into Legacy (if the CD/DVD isn't EFI-bootable)
3. Boot on the BootCD and start the disk manager
   I should mention that on my S13P the screen was not centered (shifted 2/3 right and upper part is missing). Just ignore this and do your actions.
4. Select the Recovery partition and change the "Flags". You see the "diag" and "hidden" flags enabled. Remove those flags (those preventing that actions+drive letter can be added within Windows Disk Management).
5. Reboot again, BIOS -> UEFI, and start Windows.
6. Now within Windows, the partition became visible (go to Disk Management and add driver letter to it)
7. Now do your copy actions (as mentioned by OP).
8. When finished, remove drive-letter again
9. Optionally set the flags back on again (via that BootCD)

 

Thanks! Great find. I'll try that tomorrow.

 

You are a genius! Just discovered after installing my ssd that I "lost" vegas, however with an external hdd case and this guide:
How to Edit the Registry on a Secondary Drive | eHow.com I could retrieve my serial

 

Here are the links to use to download Sony Vegas Studio, DVD Architect, Sound Forge and Acid Music Studio:

Sony Creative Software - Download: Sound Forge Audio Studio

Sony Creative Software - Download: ACID Music Studio

Sony Creative Software - Download: Vegas Pro

To activate the software you will need the License codes recovered from the registry on your hard drive with the original Sony installs of these programs. See above post(s). Have fun!

 

If you want to do your work just within diskpart with a GPT formatted drive.....here are the GUID codes (in HEX) to do so:

standard windows visible partition GUID:

set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7

you will have to add the drive letter per OP after applying this!

windows Recovery partition GUID:

set id=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC

this produces a type 27 bootable windows recovery partition! Then use remove letter command to dismount the drive!

 

^ thanks. i had found the GUID Recovery Partition type code before but was too lazy to search for one for a normal partition. i'll add this info to the first post (with your name, of course). +1 rep for you.

 

This is great info, thanks! I have created an automated script that does much of the hard work, check out http://github.com/victorklos/recovaio. This was tested with Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 32-bit boot cd and works flawlessly. I have a Sony Vaio S15, which I am now gonna reinstall with dual boot Linux...

Thanks again!

 

Thanks, can't wait to try your script out. I'm currently dual booting with SalineOS / vista. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

darxide_sorcerer, you claim quote: "it bothered me a lot that SONY insists that we should lose our access to the bundled and pre-installed Adobe applications (Acrobat, Photoshop Elements, Premier Elements) or the DVD/Blu-ray playback applications (WinDVD/PowerDVD) if we decide go the clean-install route."

I don't know why someone would be hot and bothered with something that self evident that naturally follows an action "clean install".

darxide_sorcerer, I understood you were discussing Sony, turns out, you are discussing Microsoft:

According to Microsoft Employee Brandon LeBlanc:

If you've replaced your OS with Windows 8, then you're no-longer running WinXP, Vista or 7. This effectively means that you loose all applications pertaining to WinXP, Vista or 7. Additionally, you will loose functionality to WinXP, Vista or 7 even if you don't upgrade to Windows 8, not limited to WMC Internet TV which will not be available after September 20, 2012.

Windows 8 won't support DVD, Blu-ray playback by default. The customer must purchase software from Microsoft or a third party when said is already included in previous versions of OS. Doesn't this bother you?

Additionally you must keep your WinXP, Vista or 7 disc around for as long as you own Windows 8 upgrade in the event things go horribly wrong which is not an unlikely scenario with Microsoft, That way, you can at least return to where you were before installed Windows 8. Finally, you'll need time. The best-case scenario for a reinstall is a day. The worst case: three or four days. You'll be spending a lot of that time waiting, so get a good book, too.

If you are as easily bothered, What should bother you and bothers a large percentage of people online evidenced by a customers comment in a question and answer session with Microsoft Employee Brandon LeBlanc "Why isn't Brandon talking to us anymore?" is the removal of funtionality for WinXP, Vista or 7 customers to make way for a chopped chop version of a new OS. Microsoft is well aware when customers take off the blinders and see Windows 8 for what it is A MONEY PIT they will jump ship back to a fully functional previous version unfortunately Microsoft is tying up all loose ends crippling previous versions.

 

wow! you have even found out the names of all the applications/utilities inside the WIMs. kudos to you. just an fyi, apparently the MOD file names differ among different year VAIOs.

PS: i said this before, but i can't take all the credit for this work. someone else had found out the correct way to patch MOD files to WIMs (there is a thread here which is about two years old); i just wrote that Windows script to patch the files and recovered some applications that i needed, and then posted this guide here.

 

No official names, just my guesses. That is, after running setup.exe or looking at the code...

My assumption is that each app gets a new mod-number for each new version/release. If that is indeed so, we can easily update the script and keep one central repository of all known mods...

 

I couldn't get this to work. Running SalineOS (debian squeeze / xfce), there was no option to mount the partition in the file browser (thunar).
I manually mounted it (sda1) into /media/vaio and then could access the files.
I plugged in my external drive and changed directories in the terminal like you said, but you script would just output "A Recovery partition does not seem to be mounted", even though it was mounted.
Thinking something was messed up, I downloaded 32bit mint debian and made a bootable flash drive. the recovery partition (sda1) still didn't show up in the file browser, until i went into gparted and changed the partition flag (unchecked diag). Now the partition showed up and i was able to mount it, followed the directions again but I'm still getting the error "A Recovery partition does not seem to be mounted"

Perhaps my older vaio (VGN-SR290) has different recovery directory filenames?
(While i was in there, i did copy the /data folder to my external drive so i can later try darxide_sorcerer's method.)
the data folder seems to contain /2008 and /2009 folders with directories and .mod files

 

Thanks for trying!

The script makes some assumptions, and you have bumped into one. Probably it has to do with your machine - older - not being GPT. Definitely something to improve.

Could you please send me the output of the 'mount' command and of the 'lsblk' command when you are booted into your live-cd? I will take a look.

In the mean time, you could try to get past the - erroneous - dependency checking by altering the Makefile line 36 to become:

MOUNTDIR := "/media/vaio"

The LMDE 32-bit live-cd may look differently to partition flags, because when I tested it just showed up. Also it uses Nautilus as file browser. Maybe you would be willing to try that one too? Btw, 'messed up' shouldn't be easily achieved as the script only does writing to the current directory.

The script did not reach the stage where it would start copying. When it does, it just runs the find command that would get all .mod files recursively. From what I read until now that would also work in your case. Problem to fix is how to detect what the recovery partition _is_ in the first place.

Thanks for your time.
cheers,
Victor

 

This worked!

This time around I didn't go through the bother of messing with Nautilus.
Running from the live cd, I simply did a "sudo mkdir /media/vaio" and then "sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/vaio", and the recovery partition was mounted and accessible in the file browser.
Then i copied your makefile code into the text editor, made the change you said, and saved it on my external drive in the recovery directory i made, and then ran "make all" from the terminal (in same directory) and it worked.
It did output some errors - I assume because i didn't have the same .wim files you have listed to rename in your code.

In the end I ended up with 51 .wim files totaling 3.8Gb. Some are obviously named Adobe, etc. while others are just a number. If i get time I'll figure out what they are and post here.

sure..

Code:

mint@mint ~ $ mount
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=1536088k,nr_inodes=217298,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
/dev/sdb1 on /live/image type vfat (ro,noatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /live/cow type tmpfs (rw,noatime,mode=755)
aufs on / type aufs (rw,relatime,si=6f5ed13f,noxino)
tmpfs on /live type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=308224k,mode=755)
tmpfs on /var/run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=616448k)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /var/run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=616448k)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /dev/cgroup/cpu type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpu,release_agent=/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean)
/dev/sda2 on /media/vista type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=2048)
/dev/sda4 on /media/14eed6ec-62a1-47bc-a6f8-2169db97a5b2 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered,uhelper=udisks)
/dev/sda1 on /media/vaio type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096)

Code:

mint@mint ~ $ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 298.1G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0  10.4G  0 part /media/vaio
├─sda2   8:2    0   150G  0 part /media/vista
├─sda3   8:3    0     6G  0 part 
└─sda4   8:4    0 131.7G  0 part /media/14eed6ec-62a1-47bc-a6f8-2169db97a5b2
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
sdb      8:16   1   3.8G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   3.8G  0 part /live/image
loop0    7:0    0   1.2G  1 loop 

 

Thanks for this!

Though, initially it did not work for me (I have the s15), all I did is tweak line 36. I Changed it to

Code:

MOUNTDIR := "/media/Recovery"

The recovered installers works good but it still needs the keys (Sony Imagination Studio)..

 

And that was the almost the first line the TS did mention:
Before any upgrade, have your system started once to be able to retrieve the serials/keys from registry.
There is a tool which enables you to check the registry offline. If you didn't yet formatted/cleaned the original setup, you might give this a try.

 

You can use this tool to extract the .MOD files: SonyExtractor. It has a GUI

I take no credit for this, the link is in this guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/460685-win-7-fresh-install-guide-vaio-f-series.html#post5903300

 

>>>deleted<<<

 

This web page proved quite useful for me!

 

It was very useful indeed for me, however my 2012 SVS13A1C5E had different file names for the mod files - I wrote down some of the more important ones at home, I'll post them up when I get home. I've had trouble with Powerdvd however, the version I found was a non-bluray version. I'll go through the other .mod files later tonight and see if perhaps one of them is a patch for it.

MODJ-187915 - Adobe Elements 10
MODJ-189518 - PowerDVD 9 (oem, non HD)
MODJ-179400 - Acrobat X

 

Great thread btw.... Question= Now that I have access to the recovery drive can I somehow revert the computer back to it's OEM state? My kid corrupted the puter w/trojans/malware so I installed a new copy of WIN7 without getting recovery disks! I know stupid!!! I lost all functionality of the assit/vaio buttons & the grapics acceleator button for speed/stamina. I figure if I can get back to the oem I can begin with a clean slate & start to remove all the bloatwaare from there. I tried using sony support page for the drivers & software, but still lost some of its functions.

Any help would be great!

Viao PCG-41217L/Vpcsc1afm

 

^ if the recovery partition is not removed, i believe you can access it at boot time by pressing and holding F10 while the computer turns on and POSTs. at that point, the recovery application loads and will guide you through. (i haven't done a recovery myself, so others, please correct me if i'm wrong here.)

 

do you do this after you enter the command disk partition.

 

Well, even though I was first to reply in this thread months ago, I've only just got round to attempting this. I was only interested in powerDVD and I'm pretty sure I've run into the same problem as Jellan. annoyingly I didn't have a blu-ray to test so didn't discover that it was the non-HD version so I'll have to get the hard-drive back out tonight and see if I can find a patch for it. Anyone else had the same?

 

I found out that you can just put the original hard-drive in a caddy, plug it in via USB, open up viao care and recover the software from in there. It just gives you a list of software and you check the ones you want. No hacks involved at all!

After having the above problems with powerDVD, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it via Viao Care and hey presto: full blu-ray version installed without haassle.

 

does anyone remember if the pc came with vegas and other sony editing software... i remember it did. i tried the vaio care trick and while that is byfar the best method.. i couldnt find the software i was looking for. does anyone have the mod file name for sony sofware? (btw i deleted my recovery partition so im doing this all off of my vaio care made usb drive... this may be a workaround to prevent altering partition tables. it also might not contain everything.)

EDIT: Im trying out imagination studio.. is that the software i was thinking about... who knows!?!?!

IT IS!!!!!!! vegas and all. by far the vaio care method is the best. if using your flash drive. click install software. it will tell you to insert your drive even if you have it in already. after a few seconds it will just start... you can select drivers and programs.... very nice

 

My god, this is amazing, just did it on my cousin's laptop, I would like to thank you! Amazing, can't rep you enough

 

you're very welcome. i'm glad i could be of help.

 

I am planning to sell my Z1 and was thinking of removing the adobe programs that came with it in the recovery partition since I want to keep them for my own use. Will removing the MOD files corrupt the partition? Is there a safe way to do this so that if the new owner does a system restore it won't install any of the adobe programs?

 

Does the Sony Vaio Care allow downloading of Vegas etc on the orginal HDD ?

I needed to reformat the original HDD due to some viral attack. Oh well. There goes the bundled software.

 

No offense to the OP, but this is absolutely ridiculous if you want to do a clean install into your replaced SSD for example. Is there no legit way to backup and burn the complete pre-installed software to a CD? For I am not a geek.

 

yes, you can make the recovery discs from within Windows, boot with the first DVD, and restore the factory image onto the new SSD, for example. but you'll end up with all the bloatware SONY thinks is necessary.

 

Mine came with the Sony Suite Vegas, ACID and Sound Forge so no need to backup these installer form the recovery partition.

I think it's great that Sony does this. Their apps are pretty solid.

 

Yes. It's very easy and instructions are on the first page of the thread. I have my Vegas, Acid, DVD and Sound Forge apps and the related serials.