Vaio Pro 11 - Reset your PC A required drive partition is missing

I went to go reset my Vaio Pro 11 laptop because I want to sell it. I have the recovery media (I backed it up and deleted the original on the SSD), and did this once before to verify it worked, and it did. But now I get an error that says
"Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing" when I boot and try to reset my PC. I made two backups and both USB backups are doing the same thing.

Any ideas? I could just do a clean install, but that's a pain in the butt and I'm sure anyone buying this would like a factory fresh installation with recovery partition on the drive.

 

OK, so I found a Macrium Reflect Image that I made as soon as I got into Windows when I first got the machine, great. So I go to do a recovery and it says: "Check and insert the correct disc: Cannot use this Recover Media for this computer. Confirm the model type. Error: 212"

UGH, what a mess. In the BIOS it says "Machine Name: Reserved" and "Serial Number: Reserved"

Not sure what the heck that means, but from my fussing around it seems that this is why I can't restore... any ideas?

I do have a clean image with a Windows 8.1 install and maybe just leave it at that, letting the buyer know there is no system restore from Sony, but they can use the Reflect restore. Grr. Stupid Sony, why is it so complicated?

 

Personally, I would prefer a clean install over the bloatware that comes with the factory install. Advertise it as a desirable feature and you'll find a buyer who wants it that way.

Anyway, what options are available when you start the recovery from the discs? If there is an option for complete system recovery, I think that will delete everything on the SSD and rebuild all the partitions, including the recovery partition that you deleted. I don't think it will rebuild your RAID, so if you've messed around with that you need to reconfigure the RAID back the way it was before trying the recovery.

 

There is no RAID. it's just the Vaio Pro 11 with a single 128GB SSD. Clean install is a good feature IMHO, but without having a way for the buyer to reset it themselves is usually not desirable. It seems my laptop version and serial number got wiped from the CMOS somehow, and that is what is causing the problem. I don't know how it happened, it just did.

 

You might want to try wiping the ssd partitions using Gparted linux *(install to flash drive with unetbootin or linuxlive usb creator) and remake the original 2 partitions since you deleted the recovery partition. If you don't remember the size of the recovery partition, try about 12gb.

I vaguely remember trying out my vaio recovery dvds and I think I had to manually make the partitions before the dvds would install.
I did something like:
partition 1: 12gb for recovery
partition 2: the rest of the free space.

*note if you have any linux cd's or .iso's laying around you can use that. almost all distributions include gparted utility.

 

Have you opened it and looked at the SSD? I ask because the VPCZ1 came with a 'single' SSD that was actually two SSD modules configured internally as a RAID0. That is how they managed those blazing speeds.

 

I've tried a handful of things and nothing has worked. The recovery portion is at the end of the free space of the drive, everything else is in front of that. I've used gparted, disk part, Reflect, etc with no success.

Yes, I've opened the laptop and it's a single 128GB SSD. Speeds aren't that great.

 

Well if nothing else, maybe you can look and see what types of files are on the recovery media you made. There are some threads here for extracting and working with those files.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/121966-extract-software-new-sony-format-image.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...dvd-etc-sony-s-hidden-recovery-partition.html

 

Or something like this: How to create factory restore (system recovery) partition in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 [Guide] | Reviews, news, tips, and tricks | dotTechdotTech

 

Thanks. I'll go through those suggestions, but the amount that I'll get back from this laptop, isn't worth the problem IMHO. I'll just offer a USB drive with a Macrium Reflect recovery drive and the Reflect image file with Win 8.1 clean install on it.