Urgent Sony Vaio Laptop Problem! *Please Help*

Hi, I own a Sony Vaio VGN-FS315S laptop, with Windows XP Home Edition, and have had it for around 2 years now. A few weeks ago after downloading one of those flash player upgrades, my computer froze and the only option I had was to hold down the 'ON' button to turn it off. When I restarted the laptop, the 'Vaio' logo appeared on the start up screen a lot longer than usual, and then went to a black screen showing the words:

Operating system not found

Nothing would get out of this so I ended up having to restart the laptop several times to find out that my restore system (usually booted by the F9 or 10 key) wasn't working. I was able to enter the BIOS through the F2 key, but little could be changed. The order of boot from the BIOS is set as:

Floppy Disk Drive
Optical Drive
Hard Disk Drive
Network

After trying various repair and boot discs I had found online, and a Windows XP recovery disc from my old desktop (since I don't have any for my laptop), still there was no change. I read up on this error message on the internet and found that other people had recommended using another hard drive. Therefore, I purchased a replacement hard disk drive for my Sony Vaio which is identical to the original. The hard drive is a:

Fujitsu 100GB MHV2100AT (Refurbished)

Replacing the hard drive appeared an easy enough task so I just done it myself. Now with the new drive in the laptop, I get the message:

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key
-

Something I should point out is that the old system recovery disc I previously used had no effect, but this time it did work and reached 100% completion. However, after prompting to restart the system and remove the disk on boot, I returned to the previous error statement of the system disk being invalid.

AHHHHHHHHHH!

Someone please help, I'm getting to the end of my tether with this laptop. I haven't exactly got much money at the moment to take it to a repair shop. Are there any restore discs online that will repair the problem. I'm assuming the new hard drive is fine since I have had more results with that. Although, I would be far more happy to get my old drive with my original files back if possible.

I urgently need my laptop back to complete Uni presentations, so would be extremely grateful to anyone who can help ASAP. Thanks.

 

Have you tried doing a clean system installation? That is, get a Windows XP disc, put it in the CD drive, boot the system with it, and select "Install windows XP". You won't get the original files back, but the system should work.

 

I guess you have not made a set of recovery disc. Maybe you can ask sony esupport to see if they will give you a set. Also, try F8 at power on to see if it works.

 

Guys, listen to what McClane9 is saying.

1. His original drive gave him a "Operating system not found" error.
2. He replaced the drive
3. He used a Sony supplied system restore disk to restore the system.
4. That process ran to completion.
5. He now gets a "Invalid System disk".

F8 (boot to the hidden recovery partition) is NOT going to work he has a new drive that has no hidden recovery partition.
He has effectively done a "clean" system install.

It sounds to me like the primary partition is not marked as active, and therefore won't boot.

McClane9, when you did the recovery to the new drive were there TWO options? One to restore the entire drive and another to restore the C: drive? If so, I am betting you took the second option. This option assumed that the C: drive (partition) was already bootable. If I am correct, you have two options. #1 redo the restore and select the option to restore the entire drive. Or use Fdisk or some partition manager to mark the C: partition as active.

Gary

 

I wonder what would happen if you booted a Ubuntu LiveCD ( http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download ) and used gparted to get information about the hard drive and partition tables. Just don't select "Install" from the boot menu, or hit the install icon once the gui comes up.

-John

 

to activate drive. plug it in a desktop

go to control pannel-admin tools-compu managment- managment.

i was fidling around with desktops trying to active my new hard drives when i dound you could do this and not have to download other programs. you can delete drives format rename active. very usefull. in vista you can partition it also while using it.

 

While that will work, McClane9 just needs to make sure that the desktop machine doesn't try to BOOT from the drive. That is, it needs to be installed as a secondary drive.

That is a lot of effort getting it out of the laptop, into the desktop and back, when the easiest way to mark it active, assuming I was right with that being the issue, is to boot up dos, unbutu, some standalone partition manager and use one of those tools to mark it active.

But coolazn's way will work if there is no other alternative and if you are careful.

Gary

 

Errr... well the recovery disc I used wasn't a Sony I'm afraid, it was from an Advent.

When I got into the system recovery I had 3 recovery choices, one was 'non-destructable' but can't remember the others.

How do I perform your second option of marking the 'C' drive as active?

Thanks for any help.

 

If it wasn't a Sony recovery disk we have two issues.

1. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell it will work. It won't have any of the proper drivers for your Sony hardware.

2. Even if by some strange miracle it would work, what you have done is TECHNICALLY illegal as you have used an OEM version of Windows that is tied to a particular manufacturer's hardware on a different manufacturers machine. This breaks the license agreement.

Because of item #2, we can't continue to discuss this situation here. There is a zero tolerance policy about such piracy on Notebook Review forums. Sorry. You will need to get a legally licensed copy of Windows for you machine, either by getting the proper disks from Sony or buying a new copy of XP. Yes, I know you had a valid license for Windows, but not for the OEM disk you are trying to use. I know that's not what you will want to hear, but that's just the way it is.

Gary