system restore without recovery disc

Hello,

i have the following problem:

When i tried to do a system restore via the VAIO Recovery Utility i chose to partition my disc into two partitions before doing a complete restore. This option kept my hidden partition in tact (recovery disc), at least that's what it said as a summary before i executed it. But when the system restarted it stopped right after the VAIO startup screen. It just showed a black screen with a ' _ ' blinking in the top left corner and didn't do anything... Now windows can't boot anymore, it just stops after the vaio screen and i didn't bother to make a system recovery DVD, so what can i do now?

I tried using some dvd that was delivered with the laptop (AR31M) which is called "Upgrade your windows vista experience". I can boot from the DVD drive with that and i can then choose a repair option but Repairing the system says it doesn't contain any errors and vista should boot correctly.

Can anyone help me get my laptop to boot windows vista again / to do a system restore ???

A friend of mine has a FE41M which has Windows Vista Home Premium on it as well, if i create a system recovery DVD on his laptop and i use that on my laptop, will i then be able to fix it maybe? At the moment i will try different solutions first because i want to get it to work right now!

EDIT: with that same DVD i can choose to install vista and when i do that it all goes well until it says installation complete and then it has to do a reboot... same thing, the system stops after the vaio screen.. and if i leave the boot priority on the DVD drive it will start windows setup again...
I am now trying to install it AFTER i did a format of C:\ ... After this option i will have one thing left to do and that is to delete the/all partition(s) (also the hidden partition...) and make a new one and then try to install..

 

Is there any way i can get rid of the hidden partition before a clean vista installation?

During install i can see my harddrive and i can format it or delete partitions etc. BUT when i delete all partitions so that it is only unallocated space on the harddrive and then i make 1 partition of 100%, it names it automatically "partition 2" which indicates the hidden partition is still there (partition 1?) and maybe that is a reason it won't start. I want everything off my HD, a total format and then install a clean legit windows vista home premium on it.

Anyone?

 

You can remove the partition. Make sure when you install with the recovery disc...select NO for something that says VAIO something...(there will be a description for it) that will totally remove the partition.

 

the problem is: i have no recovery disk

installing a clean version doesn't help me in any way, i have the same problem: it does install and says installation complete and then it needs to reboot for the first time and it stops after the vaio screen in bios (just shows a black screen with a white blinking underscore in top left corner).

 

Eventually, someone told me it might have something to do with the master boot records that could still contain bad links or something like that, so the format/partitioning managing in the windows install dialog is indeed very crappy (duh? .

I burned a bootable ultimate boot cd with a lot of tools for a lot of things. About 6 different partitioning/formatting tools where there so i completely removed all partitions (including the hidden sony partition) formatted my drive. A clean windows vista install (without sony bloatware) was now possible and everything works again because sony had all their drivers/utils on their download page.