topic SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive in PCs & Accessories

SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive

captaintact — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:59:11 GMT

Hello

I have just replaced a faulty Hard Drive on my SONY VAIO VGN-S5XP/B. It is slightly larger, 160GB than the original which i think was 100GB. However, when i try my recovery discs using disc 1 after about a minute a pop-up appears and tells me that i "cannot use this Utility with this computer. Check the Model"

Any thoughts please.

Graeme

SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive

Blencogo — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:12:47 GMT

Look in the BIOS by tapping F2 when you first see the Vaio logo. Check what model is listed in the BIOS. Is the new Hard Drive recognised in the BIOS? Choose to reset the BIOS Defaults, Save and Exit.

Is there a model mismatch between the discs and the BIOS?

SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive

captaintact — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:38:28 GMT

Yes fully seen in BIOS. I know the PC still fully works as i tried installing VISTA which worked perfectly but as that was for another machine i would not be able to activate it. But just tried it. The Recovery discs are for this Model. I have also reset BIOS to default setting using F9 then F10 to save and exit.

Checking the BIOS it reads:

BIOS ver R0101V0

Video BIOS ver VON44_54

Machine Name VGN-S5XP_B

UUID dd506040-d11b-11d9

-Bad3-00014a9e7a2e

Does the last bit mean there is a problem even though i could install Vista and Win7?!

I tried downloading the latest BIOS but it will not install saying that it cannot read WebFlash.

Any thoughtsplease.

Cheers

Graeme

Message was edited by: captaintact

SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive

Blencogo — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:26:27 GMT

Sorry Graeme, I don't know the answer to that.

Have you reformatted the drive - I don't think you can overwrite Windows 7 with XP.

The Sony Recovery Discs are model specific and the problem appears to be that the Recovery Discs do not recognise the Vaio as the same model and I think you will have to contact Sony Support for advice unless someone else here is able to help???

SONY VAIO Recovery disc with larger drive

captaintact — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:10:21 GMT

The problem was exactly the same when the drive was brand new and completely unused as when it had Vista/Win7 on it.

Can you confirm that it should restore to a larger drive as i read somewhere that it would not. If that was the case and older, small drives are no longer available that would render the software unusable?

Also what was the problem i got trying to install the BIOS update?

Many thanks

Graeme