recovery dvds not completing installation?

hi there.

i've tried to restore my system to factory settings two times
already. the windows recovery works, but when attempting
to restore applications, the system just seems to pause (for
instance at installing the toshiba bluetooth stack).

i'm trying it again now to see if i just need to wait longer, but
in the meantime, please let me know if this is a known prob-
lem, perhaps even with a known workaround or solution.

oh, i have vaio sz1xp.

ps. is there a way to order a recovery set for european sys-
tems? i found a service which does that for the US, but not
for europe yet.

 

The recovery cd is a joke. I used a DVD-RW and it wouldn't accept it. I just don't understand why Sony can't give us a recovery disk. How much extra will that cost them?

 

i agree that it's far from ideal not to include one. i wasted
two dual-layer dvds and ended up using two 4.7GB ones,
but i'd much rather have a factory-burnt dvd.

ps. doing the application recovery bit now, i'll let it run w/o
touching the system.. i hope it completes succesfully and
leaves me with a usable system.

 

I ues the Recovery Utility 2.6 through HDD recovery (hidden partition)
works OK, about 45mins:
1. install windows=7mins
2. prepare windows=5 mins
3. recover applications~19mins
Burn recovery CD using memorex DVD-R 8x works OK.
US recovery cd is no good for you, they don't have Adobe® Premiere® Elements ,Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 4.0&..

 

well, i don't need those programs, i consider them bloat.

i fear i already destroyed my recovery partition after i
created the dvds.

oh, recovery completed here. now my laptop is stuck at
'logging off'.. i'll do a hard reset and see if windows
works properly now.

 

Does some sort of recovery partition still need to be in there to re-install to factory settings? I completely formatted my FJ170 and installed my own copy of Win XP Pro.

Now when I try to boot from the recovery disc to try and restore to factory settings, it says this disc is not compatible with the notebook model. It also won't let install any drivers/applications from the recovery disc onto my XP Pro giving errors like 'Language not Found'.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

im most likely going to have to do a reinstall very soon, let me know the besy way going about it, the last thing i need is to be stuck with a usless system cuz the discs dont read or something. I have 2 burnt DVDs arleady made.

 

jwdkhan - no, but you should have created the disks before installing;
if the disks give such an error, i think the recovery partition you had
contained incorrect data.

leaning_asus - if you still have your recovery partition, use that. other-
wise, use the recovery dvds - if the recovery tool did not produce any
errors while creating the set, i think you can assume they're good.

 

I felt so uncomfortable about not having official recovery media that I've left my drive factory-partitioned, have the recovery set made from the VAIO recovery utility, and made an additional backup using Ghost-type software. One way or the other i should be covered!!

 

neenee - thanks for your reply. I had created my recovery disc (the FJ170 needs just one) before formatting and installing XP Pro. I was initially able to load all drivers from the disc.

But recently I tried to install a media application from the disc but it gave me an error saying 'language not found'. After trying everything, I decided to reformat and install the Windows copy on the disc. But now it says this disc not compatible with this notebook model??? I even went into BestBuy and burnt a new recovery disc but it gives same message.

Now I can't re-install to factory settings and also cannot load any VAIO drivers after I installed my XP Pro again. Stuck in a strange situation. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

lisat - looks like you don't like taking risks

jwdkhan - in which country did you buy your laptop - is it a european one?

 

neenee, no I bought it here in the US.

However one thing I might add. I recently travelled to South Africa and whilst there, the notebook just froze on me one day. After attempting to reboot it, it would ask for a bios level password which I had never set. I turned it in to the Sony Service center in Johannesburg, South Africa who managed to un-lock it for me (long story because I was told for security reasons there is no way of doing that yourself for the FJ and BX series).

I was told nothing else was touched on the notebook. I wonder if that has anything to do with it, but if I'm not mistaken, I think I was able to install 'Click to DVD' from the recovery disc even after that. Now it just seems the software on the CD is in-compatible with this notebook for some reason. Can bios settings affect any of this? Thanks.

 

hm. the bios seems quite spartan compared to desktop
systems; i have not seen any settings there which might
influence recovery in this fasion.

i doubt they flashed the bios with a version which breaks
recovery - would be a bit odd at least, and quite a long
shot for me to conclude.. but it's something which came
to mind when i thought of this problem.

perhaps you can check the bios version - it may be loca-
lized?

 

Just a follow-up. I called Sony Support and they couldn't think why this was happening. Except that everytime the notebook reboots it looks for identification markers to whether it is the same machine (???). Apparently the South African incident changed something in the notebook's bios which is why everytime I would try to reboot off of the recovery disk, it would not recognize it and give the incompatibility error. I was told the only way to fix this would be to re-flash the bios and do something with the DMI (???).

They wanted to charge me $240 for the repair but quickly agreed to fix it for free since I was stuck in a third country with an unknown failure in my machine and I did take it to a Sony Service center for repair. Got a prepaid box from Sony last week, shipped out by Fedex and just recieved the re-flashed notebook today (exactly 7 days latter). Things look good and now I'll try and reformat it and re-install a clean copy of XP to get rid of all the junkware. Thanks everyone for trying to help. Jawad