Return my Sony Vaio PCG-Z1aP to life.

Hello,
I'm a little bit of a novice and I inherited a Sony Vaio PCG-Z1AP laptop from my company. The HD was formatted and left blank. My company didn't provide recovery discs and I was hoping to get it back up and running. I also have a Windows XP Professional license but no disc. The Sony website provides drivers but no recovery disc. I was told I need to get a Sony service center to re-image it. Does anyone have an idea what I could do to get it up and running?
Thanks,
be3vans

 

All you really need to do is use a regular copy of XP and install that, then install the drivers from sonys site. You don't really need to use the official "recovery discs". Another option would be to install linux (which is free) instead of windows. That would get you up and running for free and give you general web, office, and email functionality, plus introduce you to the world of linux.
I would suggest a linux such as ubuntu or mint. If your hardware is old and you don't have much ram you might use a "lighter" version such as Xbuntu, mint9 xfce, or even something very light like Puppy linux.

 

Excellent, thank you for the help!

 

I should also add if you do decide to install linux, ask any questions here for the fastest response:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/linux-compatibility-software/