Sony Vaio Z startup issue

I have a sony vaio Z with an ssd in it. The startup takes about 30 or so seconds, but my laptop seems to hang up at a blank screen with a blinking cursor for about 10 seconds after the vaio logo screen.

I was experimenting and upgraded to Win 8 on the laptop, but I didn't like it so I ended up restoring it to factory defaults. The only difference is that now my hard drive is divided into two partitions (C and D; pre-factory restore or Win 8 install), so is that the reason this blank screen is happening? I haven't touch which one is the primary partition, as otherwise my computer would have crashed if put the new D as the primary partition.

I have tried going into setup (where you can pick the order of the bootable devices) but it seems it is disabled in Vaios. I don't have any other operating system other than Windows 7 or even any Parallel OSes, since Sony, in its wisdom, has disabled virtualization in its notebooks.

EDIT: I am able to go in the setup using F2 and changed the device order (SSD is first, optical second) while the third and fourth choices of external device and network are disable so they don't matter in the list. Still, there is still a hang up with that blank screen. Macs are able to start in less than 15 seconds.

 

Do you have a quad ssd setup on your z? Many claim that that's the reason for the long blinking cursors. something about loading something lol.

As for the C and D partition go into bios and enable show raid config or something like that in bios then during boot up it should ask you to click ctrl + i. see if your ssd are in a raid config. if they aren't make sure they are. then you can use the recovery disk/partition to make make just a C partition by using the advance restore method.

 

Yes, I do have four 128 gb showing in my setup and have intel raid utility. So, there is no respite except to make make 1 partition out of 2? I made the second partition so I don't have to move my data if I have to do a clean install of the OS.

 

So let me get this straight. what you want is a C and a D drive? D drive for your data, but at the moment it contains windows 8 on it? Or do you simply just want a C drive?

 

I had partitioned the drive into C and D, but since usb wasn't booting up, I ended up installing Win 8 on the C drive.

I didn't like Win 8 as my primary OS at that time (I have VT enabled now so perhaps would do a parallels now), so I restored the C: drive to its factory settings, which I believe left the D untouched just as a data partition. In all, D drive should not be bootable at all or I would get an option to load into a different windows at startup.

 

I think i get what you're saying lol. Boot into Windows 7 and back up everything you want to keep on the D drive to a usb or external hd. After saving your files try formatting the D drive. This should make the drive not bootable during start up since you would be wiping windows 8 from it.

*Make sure you backup everything you want that in the D drive before you format it!!*

 

But I don't have windows 8 on the D drive if I installed it on the C drive?

 

Hmm didn't you restore your laptop to factory settings? that means you should have windows 7 installed only. I don't think you can have 2 OS installed on the same partition in your case C (win 7 & 8). If you're booting into windows 8 then i believe it would show up as the C partition whereas booting into windows 7, the files for windows 8 would be in the D partition, but i might be wrong.

Anyways i think this can be solved using the sony recovery disk/partition. There's an advance option in the recovery that should give you plenty of options, but i think the one you want is the C drive only option. That's where it just restores everything on the C drive leaving everything else untouched. I would backup any files worth keeping on both C and D drives to a usb/ext hd first though.

 

Is there some reason you find the poster's question to be hilarious? It struck me as being a serious question. Why do you add "lol" to the end of your sentences?

 

in no way did i find the poster's question to be hilarious. I know it's a serious question that's the reason for me trying to help him/her. The reason why i add "lol" to the end of my sentence is because i couldn't exactly describe what "something about loading something." was or that i think i get what he's saying, but im not sure. I'm not trying to be a , just simply trying to help. I'll make sure to place my lol in the right place next time

 

I'm starting to think that when he installed windows 8, he might have deleted the recovery partition.
Did you burn the recovery discs? That should help you restore everything to factory defaults.