Corrupted recovery partition on VAIO PRO

My VAIO PRO 11's recovery partition got corrupted after I upgraded the original Windows 8 to 8.1
Apparently I was supposed to create recovery media before doing that. Sadly I only found out about that afterwards.
I checked the hidden recovery partition, and it's actually still there, with three files, one large Install.WIM file, which seems to contain a complete Windows installation. The other two files are instructions for diskpart how to set up the partitions.
When going through recovery after pressing the Assist button, the system reports that no recovery partition is present.
I'd really like this to work again. Is there anything I could try? I really don't want to pay $80 to Sony just for those DVDs, although I'd be happy to pay something for someone else burning these disks for me.
incidentally, I do have a set of recovery DVDs for this laptop but the UK model. These are rejected as "wrong model", as the laptop I'm trying to restore is a US version (I don't have the UK model any more).

Any ideas?

 

Since no one has replied, I'll throw out a couple ideas..

I seem to remember a couple years back getting my vaio to boot the recovery partition by creating a bootable persistant linux usb flash drive. ( linuxliveusb , Unetbootin , pendrive)
I then used gparted (from within the linux apps) to mark the hidden recovery partition as bootable (change flag to bootable), and un-hid it.
Then I edited the grub boot menu to add an entry to boot the recovery partition.
I would use something simple like lubuntu linux.
It's been a few years since I did this so I cant remember the specifics.

another option is to look over this thread about recovering apps from the hidden sony recovery partition. It might help you understand .wims and maybe somehow make a windows install cd out of it??

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...dvd-etc-sony-s-hidden-recovery-partition.html

 

Thanks for taking time to reply!
After lots of research on the net I haven't been able to come up with anything the reactivate the recovery partition.
I tried to install the Windows version that'st in the install.wim file, and at first it seemed to work, but none of the Win 8 apps, including the App Store, would work. Not that I use them, but as we know, you can only update to Win 8.1 through the App Store, so that was not satisfying either.
Have reverted to a clean install of Win 8.1, which is not the worst thing, but when the time comes to sell on the laptop it would have been nice to reset it to factory conditions.
Ah well.