need help with sony PCG-8N1M

hi

my friends sony vaio laptop has broken, he took it to a computer repair shop and they had no luck with it.
so, he gave it to me to see if i could fix it (as i have done several IT courses)
the laptop is a sony vaio PCG-8N1M
the hard drive is backed up ob his companies server.
the OS is XP (service pack 1 .. i think , but not sure)

the problem is that first it shows the invaid boot.ini for about 5 seconds then shows" \windows\system32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is missing or corrupt" ive had this error about a hundred times on other computers and i fixed it with the XP disk.

but with htis laptop i try booting form the disk and ... i cant

it comes up with the same error.

i tries changing the bois boot order.
i tried it in almost all the available boot orders, and still no luck.

when it seems it is booting from cd it shows a back screen with the blinking flat cursor thing in the top left.

i cant think of anything else to try.

can anyone help?
please

 

What happens when you leave it at this stage? Installing\Re-installing an os can take a long time and can appear to be doing nothing:\

If it still doesn't work then then the harddrive could be damaged.

 

it dosent even come up with the press any key to boot for CD or booting fromCD...
so i dont think its installing.
and it shows the errors again after about 30 seconds

i think it might be the CD drive, but i dont know

 

Could be. The error suggests it trying to boot from the harddrive so it's just not reading the cd i suppose. External cd drives are fairly cheap and you should be able to boot from one, check the bios first though

 

i could try a network instilaton... i dont have an external cd drive at the moment.

any one know how to do a network instalion from my PC onto a laptop?

 

bump this post because i need help

 

help
(too short)

 

Have you tried booting to another CD to check it's not your copy of the XP install disc that's at fault? I agree with Willy S that it doesn't sound like it's booting from CD at all.

If you're sure the settings in the bios are OK to boot from CD, then it could be the CD or the drive itself. Borrowing a USB external optical drive to try might help? (As Willy also suggested.)

 

well ive tried about 8 diferent XP disks. 6 were originals 2 were backups i had.
so i dont think its the CDs.
most likley the CD drive.
ive been trying to look for an external one, but will a USB cd drive work in the startup probess?.. i used to have a USB keyboard and it coudnt be used untill the logonscreen came up.

 

Whether or not it'll work is totally dependent on the BIOS, I'm afraid. Given that it'll be hard if not impossible to get an answer on this from Sony beforehand, I would recommend that you only borrow a drive rather than buy one. My desktop (circa 2003 vintage) works fine booting from USB floppy/CD drives... but I'm pretty sure my older box doesn't... YMMV!