GUIDE : Clean Vista install using Extracted Recovery Image ( On a Vaio CS or Others)

How to Extract Recovery Disk for Vaio CS ( Or Other Machines ).

Well ive been through the process, and thanks to the help of alot of people who already posted links and utilities i can give a quick write up on how to do this. I have a Vaio CS, but i have a feeling that this process is pretty generic and you should be able to apply to any machine.

So people know, this keeps the recovery partition on your machine, so your machine should be able to be restored in future without the recovery CDs ( STILL MAKE SURE TO BURN THEM ).

This will give you a clean Vaio image with no bloatware and only the drivers and software required for the machine, you then have the option to install options files if you want.

Before you start, THIS WILL WIPE YOUR MACHINE, if you have any files you want to keep back them up!!

Also if this does any damage to you then i wont be held accountable, this is the process i used for my machine and it has worked for me.

DO THESE STEPS FIRST

• MAKE RECOVERY DVD's -- do make sure you do this, i went as far as testing the dvd's it made to make sure it works ok.
  
• Copy the following folder c:\Program Files\Sony\Vaio Recovery this is the recovery console, which for some reason i still cant find on the recovery CD at all? Just copy onto a USB key, you will need to manually copy it back onto the laptop after.

ACCESSING THE RECOVERY CONTENTS

There are numerous ways to do this. I'll outline the process i used.

Option 1

1. I copied the contents of the dvds that the recovery console created onto a large external hard drive, needs to be around 10gig or more. ( depends on what stuff stuff has put in your version ). This was the simpilest way i could think of doing it at the time.

Option 2

• Start the recovery console application.
• Select the option to resinstall software and drivers. If you follow this process through you should get to a screen where you can select the software or drivers you want to re install. Leave the window open, DONT CLOSE IT. While this window is open the magic hidden recovery partition becomes visible and you will be able to get access to the recovery data. On my machine it was h:, you can copy the data as you did above onto an external drive and do the extracting steps below the same way

Option 3

1. i didnt realise this was an option at the time. Dont do anything here, technically you skip this step all together. As i was doing the dvd extraction on a second machine i couldnt use this approach.

Extract the data

There are two excellent posts which explain what we are going to be doing, give them a read to understand more about the background of this process. Credit to all the people that posted in those threads, they figured out the hard parts for us all.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=233256
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=121966

• Download the software from this post
  
  http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3936210&postcount=28
  
  Thanks to bdg for this simple to use tool, Here is a direct link
  
  http://rapidshare.com/files/147096173/mod2wim.zip
  
  
• Extract mod2wip.zip to your c:\ i place mine in the root in a mod2wim folder ( C:\mod2wim )
• Run Mod2Wim.bat This pops up a console window with some options.

If you did option 1 or 2 above then use this approach

• Select option "S". This lets you point to where you have stored the recovery data ( either from the copied dvds or the recovery partion on the machine ). For me i pointed it to c:\VaioBackup\ as this is where i stored my files, you need the trailing \.

If you did option 3 above use this apparoch

• According to the readme.txt in mod2wim it says you dont have to select the recovery drive, it will mount it automatically if you leave it as Z:\ Incase that doesnt work i found the hidden drive on my machine was H:\.

Now carry on regardless of which step you did.

• Select option 2 ( Copy&Process MOD/SYN Files ) - This will run for a while and will eventually put the .WIM files in the Wim folder ( c:\mod2wim\wim )
• Select option 5 ( [Un]Mount Patched Files ) - This will go through the wim folder and extract the wims. A folder will be created for each wim and you will be able to see the MSI or setup.exe files. This is what you wanted

You have now extracted the wim files. There should also be a very large sony.wim in the wim folder, the sony.wim is a clean vista install with the basic sony drivers

NOTE: If you have been doing this on your new vaio will either need to copy the extracted wim folders to dvd or to an external HDD ( dont copy the sony.wim we will do something special with that ), as afterwards you will want to install some of that software and we are going to format the drive.

BURNING THE SONY IMAGE

Ok so we have sony.wim, this is a clean vaio image, which we will use to restore our laptop with. if you read the links above people suggested using a partition things like that. I decided to want to try and do this from DVD.

• With your favourite DVD burning software burn the following files to DVD. Put all files and folders in the root.
  
  • a. sony.wim ( found in c:\mod2wim\wim )
  • b. imagex ( this is a folder, copy the entire folder from c:\mod2wim )
  • c. the Recovery console data you copied in one of the first steps above.
• Once the DVD is burnt you now have a dvd to do the clean install from.

Ok so at this point you should have a DVD with the clean sony image, and a external drive or dvd's with the extracted software ( Sony Tools and Stuff like that ). Now we want to restore the laptop using the clean image.

DOING THE CLEAN INSTALL

To do this next steps you need a Vista DVD. Remember that ANY vista DVD will work.

Alternatively you can create a boot disk or boot USB using similar steps to these links - i havent tried this process

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/...b-flash-drive-or-usb-key-with-vista-winpe-20/
http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71

Finally there appears to be a vista recovery disk floating around - Im about to try that out.

http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8776

any option should work we just need to get to the recovery console.

• Stick the Vista DVD in your machine and turn on.
  
• Follow the steps on the screen until you see an option to Repair Vista.
  
• Select option Command Prompt (http://www.windowsreference.com/images/systemrecovery.jpg).
  
• Stick your DVD that you made with the sony wim on it into your drive.
  
• Type the following command at the prompt
  
  Format c: /q
  
  this will format your c:\ ( this will erase everything ! )
  
• Once this is complete change to the cd drive ( mine was d:\ ) eg type d:
  
• Now type the following command at the prompt
  
  imagex\imagex.exe /apply sony.wim 1 c:\
  
  this will apply the sony.wim image to your c:\

Once complete LEAVE THE DVD IN THE DRIVE. Close the console window and select restart.

The machine should now reboot and install vista. fingers crossed, remember dont take the dvd out of the machine until vista is completely installed, i dont know how or why but the dvd seems to get used, and when i tried without the DVD it gave errors.

Now you should have a clean machine up and running. The final step is to copy the vaio recovery console folder from your dvd to c:\programs files\sony

Now you can run the recovery console and reinstall the apps you want, also the extracted wim files may have additional applications which you cant seem to install from the recovery console, i know that i had Adobe elements as a wim, but couldnt re install from the recovery console.

Hope this helps someone

 

anyone tried this on a vaio z?

 

Nope, but others have done this sort of thing on various other machines.. im just written the guide that holds peoples hands a bit more.. cant see why it wouldnt work?

 

This wipes the recovery partition out as well too right?

 

so did you get all drivers to work? i.e brightness , volume settings, the buttons etc.

 

Nope doesnt wipe the recovery partition, as i didnt try and do that, it just wipes out the c:\ ( not the recovery partition )

All drivers are installed with teh basic install apart from the wifi, the wifi is a seperate install. i have all the volume, av mode, and capture buttons working right now.. i havent tried the functions keys but i assume they wil work, pretty much i went through and installed a fair bit of the software that comes wth the machine, apart from bloatware and a few of the sony packages.. Seems to be faster i wish they would release xp drivers though..

 

I have the raid 0 ssd so I'm not sure if I'll run into any problems.. It comes with 2 partitions excluding the hidden one.

 

So I did this step

Select option 5 ( [Un]Mount Patched Files ) - This will go through the wim folder and extract the wims. A folder will be created for each wim and you will be able to see the MSI or setup.exe files.

and I see the files within the WIN folder along with a folder for each WIN file -- but nothing is within the folders; Am I supposed to see installers inside of the folders after hitting 5 within the batch file program?

Thanks -- PS I have a Vaio Z

 

The wim file is huge, wouldn't fit in a single layered dvd...

 

this seems much more complicated on the raid...
basically C:\ is where Vista is when viewed in my computer but when u go into windows installation it tells you Vista is in D:\ and the dvd drive gets bumped to E:\ any RAID expert can explain this?

 

Sounds like you haven't run the script as admin. If you have, then either the imagex driver has failed to install for some reason or the files have just been renamed but not patched...

 

Could you please clarify it seems all that information is almost 6Gigs, which cant be burnt on a regular dvd, correct?

 

my Wim was about 3.6 gb, ImageX is very small as is the recovery console. Fitted on a single dvd fine for me. I didnt burn all the other wims ( eg the applications ) as that was around 8gb.. but teh sony.wim and the imagex and recovery console SHOULD ( at least for my machine ) fit on a DVD, worst cas e you could do this with an external USB maybe.. ( i havent tried. )

 

Ah theres the difference, my sony.wim files is 5.9GB. But i simply made my own recovery partiotion with all the tools and the wim, since i wount be using much space on the disk anyways i figured it would be most simple this way. Thanx for awesome guide!

 

Guys. How about this problem. I ordered recovery discs from sony, but they are not working. Saying "not the correct model", etc ****... But discs are OK, maybe its incompatibility problem.

I dont want to waste my nerves and money and would like to test your method, would it be possible? Surely the error is only because of some internal sony vaio protection and the rest of vista+software is fine to install?

 

I followed this guide exactly. When I get to the recovery cmd I can't run imagex. It gives me an error "The system cannot execute the specified program". It says this regardless of where the imagex and sony.wim are located. I have tried a DVD, and USB drive. I have an FW290. Is there something I am missing? Please help!!!

Thanks,

ice9mike

 

Need more details about what you did,

 

I followed this guide to extract the sony.wim file using the mod2wim batch file. I then made a dvd with the sony.wim and imagex files. I booted up the computer using a Vista 64bit installation DVD, selected "Repari Vista" and selected the command prompt. At this point I replaced the Vista installation DVD with the one I made containing the sony.wim file. I formatted the c drive. Then I tried to execute the imagex command on the correct drive letter (in my case it was e . That is when the system returned the error.

I also tried the above procedure using a USB drive containing the sony.wim and imagex files, but had the same error. I think the error is a permission denial, but I'm not certain how to correct it. The cmd.exe is being run as an administrator.

ice9mike

 

One possibility could be that the imagex driver wasn't installed properly in Vista or that it isn't loaded in the recovery console for some reason, is there a way you can see if the imagex driver has loaded in the recovery console?

Another possibility might be that the 64-bit recovery console has an issue with the fact that the imagex executable is 32-bit. It works however in regular 64-bit Vista environments but maybe the recovery console is special in some way? I'm busy now, but I could send you tomorrow the 64-bit imagex folder if you want to try it out, or you could download the Windows AIK iso file yourself and extract the 64-bit imagex folder from it...

 

* a. sony.wim ( found in c:\mod2wim\wim )
* b. imagex ( this is a folder, copy the entire folder from c:\mod2wim )
* c. the Recovery console data you copied in one of the first steps above.

Does (C) have to also be on the DVD, or just (A) and (B)?

 

Problem solved. Thanks to bgd for the suggestion of looking into the 64-bit tools on the Windows AIK tools. That was indeed the problem I was running a 32-bit imagex program in a 64-bit recovery console. That definitely does not work. There are two other versions, ia64, and amd64. For some reason the imagex in the ia64 did not work either, but amd64 version worked very well. Installed the sony.wim file in about 6 minutes.

It took me quite a while to figure all this out, but it was worth it. I now have a clean install of Vista with no bloaty bloatware.

ice9mike

 

You dont need c on the cd, i put it there for future use, bu tyou can just put it on a usb key if you like

 

is there a way to actually extract the whole *.wim file ?

so you can actually see the contents inside that file and all the install files, like you can on the windows vista CD's ??

so basically the sony.wim has all the drivers and OS right?

but do seperate files get extracted as well for all the drivers?

 

once you extract the wim files you get access to the installers for drivers, eg .msi or .exe or whatever and the sony.wim is a image of whats on your c drive so you can view all the vista files..

 

Just to clarify the acronyms, ia64 is short for the 64-bit Itanium platform so it shouldn't work on x64 platforms, amd64 OTOH is simply an internal MS acronym for the x64 platform (since AMD was first with the x64 platform)...

@mrhaboobi, I've updated the mod2wim archive to include the 64-bit imagex version as well ( new link) because of this issue. Only difference (apart from the bigger size) is that there are now two imagex folders, imagex32 and imagex64, but imagex32 is still the only one used by the mod2wim script...

 

but can you extract the wim file of the sony-image vista ?

if you could, could you not just make a autorun dvd to boot up on boot and install it?

 

The sony.wim does not contain the vista installer, its nothing more than image of whats on your c:\, an image or ghost or copy, but not an installer

 

I just completed the procedure and it worked just fine for me with my cs. My sony.wim ended up being like 80 megs too large for a DVD, so I loaded it along with the other required files on a USB external hard drive and it worked like a charm. Thanks for the guide!

 

Hi.

I followed this guide/thread for a FW290CTO and it worked great for me too.

The Sony.wim was too large for a single-layer DVD, so I just used a double-layer DVD and it worked great.

Thanks to mrhaboobi for the guide and for the x64 imagex pkg.

Much Appreciated.

 

does the sony.wim contain the drivers needed to make the S1 AV mode, and FN keys work?

 

You know what, I don't remember. That was about three weeks ago. I think so.
I downloaded all of the available drivers and reinstalled them in the order outlined on Sony's clean install web page:
esupport.sony.com/US/perl/support-info.pl?info_id=172

 

After the sony.wim file was installed it had all the drivers for S1, function keys, but AV mode does not work. I was considering installing all the drivers as outlined on Sony support site, but was afraid of bloating up the software that I tried so hard to remove in the first place. No AV Mode is not such a big deal for me.

ice9mike

 

Dumb question, but what's AV mode?

 

"AV Mode" is the name of one of the multimedia buttons above the keyboard, pressing it brings up a hovering multimedia panel with customizable multimedia utility shortcuts (windows media center, webcam utility, internet browser etc). The idea is nice, but it doesn't look particularly appealing IMHO, there's probably some freeware utility out there that does this better. I'm not sure if the "AV Mode" button can be programmed to execute an external utility but the nearby S1 button can...

 

I did this procedure almost immediately after opening the box and I have a question. I was looking at Sony's description of the CS on sonystyle.com and when it talks about the multi colored light at the front of the laptop, it seems to indicate it will do things while the laptop is running, but the only time mine glows is at power on/ power off and if the power plug is inserted or removed. is there some driver that needs to be installed for the lightbar?

 

OK i created all the files using the batch file. Now in my wim folder i have
1. All the directories with the installable
2. The corresponding wim files
3. Sony.wim.dir directory which is kind of replica of my c drive
4. sony.wim file which is of size 2.88 GB (3022 MB)
5. I also have the imagex folder in my c:\mode2win folder

My question is in the step provided for "BURNING THE SONY IMAGE". Of the above files what are the files i have to copy to my DVD? Should I copy the folders as well as the ".wim" files? And should i burn the sony.wim file or the sony.wim.dir folder?

Please help me

PS: Total size of my wim folder is 19.8 GB

 

HI, as per the instructions

"NOTE: If you have been doing this on your new vaio will either need to copy the extracted wim folders to dvd or to an external HDD ( dont copy the sony.wim we will do something special with that ), as afterwards you will want to install some of that software and we are going to format the drive.
"

So you want the folders that were created from the wims.

AND

Ok so we have sony.wim, this is a clean vaio image, which we will use to restore our laptop with. if you read the links above people suggested using a partition things like that. I decided to want to try and do this from DVD.

With your favourite DVD burning software burn the following files to DVD. Put all files and folders in the root.

a. sony.wim ( found in c:\mod2wim\wim )
b. imagex ( this is a folder, copy the entire folder from c:\mod2wim )
c. the Recovery console data you copied in one of the first steps above.
Once the DVD is burnt you now have a dvd to do the clean install from.

So you want the Sony.wim not the extracted version.

 

Hi Guys,

I’m hoping somebody might be able to help me; I seem to be a little bit stuck

I’m attempting to extract the data that from the recovery partition of my new fw series notebook. I followed the instructions given in mrhaboobi’s guide to extract the mod2wip.zip into the root directory c:\ and run the batch file. As my recovery partition appears to have z:\ already assigned, I didn’t change anything and just went straight ahead selecting option 2 from the list to Copy&Process MOD/SYN Files.

When the process initiated I received the following information:

Mounting recovery volume
Script> volume z:\ already exists, skipping drive mounting
>> Copying recovery volume files <<
The system cannot find the path specified...

And it carried on listing “the system cannot find the path specified” for every entry.

I’m at a bit of a loss with this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

It looks to me like you haven't extracted mod2wim.zip like this:

c:\mod2wim\mod2wim.bat
c:\mod2wim\wim\

Judging by your description, it seems like the script has found all *.mod files (otherwise it would not go through a list of files to copy) and is trying to copy each file to c:\mod2wim\wim\ but it cannot find this directory...

If you're sure the mod2wim paths are correct, check the contents of the log file "~mod2wim.log" located in your temp directory (%temp%\~mod2wim.log) to see the command line arguments preceding these complaints and to check whether the paths listed on these lines are correct...

I assume that you are running the script as administrator and that you have checked that it's indeed the recovery partition that is mounted as z:\ and not something else (if you're not sure, use another drive letter)...

 

Thanks for the reply.
But the total size of the recovery drive is 7 GB and sony.wim file is 2.88 GB. How will i create it as a DVD? Even a double layer DVD will not suffice. If i write some files separately to another DVD will it be a problem?

 

Haha, right off the bat I don't have a sony\vaio recovery folder. I'm going to give it a shot anyways, I copied everything I have in my sony folder to a usb. Worst case scenario is I lose a few hours.

I hate this bloatware crap so much, I went to xp but of course I lost my function key usage, yay!

Thinking about selling my laptop, that's how terribly bad this bloatware\sony pisses me off.

I'll post back to tell how it goes.

Model: VGN-C220E

Mark

 

Thanks for the reply bdg.

I’ve check and mod2wim.zip was extracted correctly into the c:\ directory as per your guidelines. When the batch file was executed the following information was displayed on the screen (this is only a sample, not the complete file).

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DiskPart successfully set the partition ID.

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

Leaving DiskPart...
The system cannot find the path specified.
The system cannot find the path specified.
The system cannot find the path specified.
SCRIPT> Done...


>> COPYING RECOVERY VOLUME FILES <<

g:\data\2007\10\JP_20071011000000000000000000016\MODJ-Sony_Video_Shared_Library
3.3.mod
The system cannot find the path specified.
g:\data\2007\10\JP_20071015000000000000000000039\MODJ-VAIO_DVD_Menu_Data 1.0.mod

The system cannot find the path specified.
g:\data\2007\10\JP_20071016000000000000000000010\MODJ-VAIO_Recovery_Center_Short
cut_and_Readme 1.1.mod
The system cannot find the path specified.
g:\data\2008\02\JP_20080207000000000000000000014\MODJ-120365.mod
The system cannot find the path specified.
g:\data\2008\02\JP_20080207000000000000000000066\MODJ-120383.mod

When I first saw the above info, I presumed that there was an issue of some kind, hence my previous message asking for help.

After reading your reply, I went back, checked everything over and started the process again – this time letting it run to completion, and sure enough when it had finished the .wim files were there. I then selected option 5 to Un]Mount Patched Files. When this was finished I was pleased to see that the sony.wim file (10.2GB) for my fw series was accessible.

However, when I tried to make a copy of it on my external usb hard drive I ran into further complications. At first everything seemed fine; the data was transferring as expected... but when the ‘time remaining’ reached zero, it was clear that there was still more data to be transferred. I checked the properties of the folder and it was only just over 3GB in size, leaving 7+ GB to come still.

I then noticed that the transfer speed very quickly started to deteriorate, getting slower and slower – it was grinding to a halt by the look of things. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any slower (600KB/sec!), it came up with an unexpected error (0x80070052: the file or directory cannot be created).

My first thought was that my usb hard drive might have caused the error, so I went on to try and copy the file locally on my c:\. But the same thing happened again: the drive started to grind to a halt after the counter reached zero.

I find this very strange. It’s almost as though there is something stopping me from copying the file to completion. Is it possible that Sony have added some kind of protection to recent models to stop people extracting the data from the recovery partition? I have no idea!

I’d be very interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions?

I really want to get this extraction process to work on my system so I can get rid of all the nasty bloatware!

Thanks for reading

 

Well, the message "The system cannot find the path specified." shouldn't appear at all, so that might be an indication of some problem. Have you verified that the contents of Sony.wim and other wim files is correct and not corrupted? You might want to try to manually copy all *.sny files (and *.mod files if you want them too) to the wim folder and then choose option "4: Process Files In WIM Dir" to see if that might fix the issue. Btw, do you have exactly the following set of *.sny files: p2.sny, p22.sny-p29.sny? The sony.wim file is created with this set of files, the file p2.sny being the first in line...

 

I appreciate the help bgd, thanks

The files .sny files listed are as follows: p2.sny, p22.sny, p23.sny, p24.sny, p25.sny, p26.sny and p27.sny.

The sequence is a little different from the one you listed?

 

It probably varies depending on the size of the sony.wim file which is not the same for all models, but you have the p2.sny file and an ordered set of consecutive numbered files starting with p22.sny. So, it seems ok even though you haven't got p28/p29 .sny like I have...

 

I copied all the .sny files from the recovery partition into the wim folder as you recommended and ran option 4. The result was the same as before: "The system cannot find the path specified". Despite the error message, the sony.wim file was still produced, but I question if it's missing something or corrupt. The program doesn't seem to like my system for some reason

 

Thank you very much for the guide. Follow the instruction exactly step by step, I was able to clean install vista and selected program from sony recovery pattition. Before my fw290 had 85 process running, now it has 74. Boot time before was over 2 minutes, now 1 minute 30 secs. I am glad I don't have to see bloatware in my laptop anymore.

 

Come to think of it, I'm 99.9% sure now the message "The system cannot find the path specified" is because the %temp% variable used in the path for the log file of the script is missing. If that's the case, then this error message is completely irrelevant and doesn't affect the functioning of the script in any way. You could make it dissapear (or test my theory) by adding "set temp=c:\mod2wim\" at the start of the script...

As for solving your problem, if you haven't given up already, you could manually open up a command console window with administrator privileges and enter this (provided the *.sny files are still located in the wim folder):

c:\mod2wim\imagex32\imagex.exe /export /ref c:\mod2wim\wim\*.sny c:\mod2wim\wim\ps2.sny 1 c:\mod2wim\wim\Sony.wim "Sony"

What this does is simply the same as the script is supposed to do, but skipping the use of all environment and path variables which might cause problems...

 

Following below instructions, I place the Vista Installation DVD (Ultimate version) inside the DVD drive of my laptop, configure the boot sequence to boot from CD Drive.

At boot up, I press any key to boot from the CD, after a few seconds a window screen appears to choose the language of the Vista to install ( http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/InstallVista/images/image1_3.html.

I chose english and then click next. On the next screen there two link that show, first is to "INSTALL NOW" link and the 2nd is the "repair your computer" link.
http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/InstallVista/images/image1_4.html

There is no REPAIR VISTA link mentioned in the instructions itemized below. When I click the repair computer link, it only repairs the already existing vista installed in my laptop and then reboots. If I choose the "Install now" link, It will bring to the next screen to choose the type of installation (upgrade and custom advance). The succeeding screens are instructions to install fresh window vista. No way to go to the command prompt to execute the instructions below.

Can someone here check If im doing something wrong?

# Stick the Vista DVD in your machine and turn on.
# Follow the steps on the screen until you see an option to Repair Vista.
# Select option Command Prompt ( http://www.windowsreference.com/imag...mrecovery.jpg).
# Stick your DVD that you made with the sony wim on it into your drive.
# Type the following command at the prompt

 

That's the option to choose. Repair Your Computer.