How do I recover the unrecoverable VGN-B1XP(e)?

[alandro]

I have a (pretty old) VGN-B1XP(E) and have NEVER made a recovery! (good job sony). However it's now imperative to do so. The system was lagging so bad it's intolerable. Anyway, I tried recovery from the hard disk, but when it booted again after asking questions about the name of the laptop in order to finalise the windows xp installation, I received a BSOD and rebooted. Doing another attempt to recover produced the same error and so I decided to recover from the recovery DVDs I made upon purchase. That seemed a more reliable solution since at a point I had erased the recovery partition and restored it again which might have made it problematic (just a guess though)

Anyway when trying to use the recovery DVDs I got an error when recovering from the second DVD. Propably the error mentioned here: http://www.sony.gr/support/el/product/VGN-B1XP/downloads/SOAVRU-00963700-UN_2069. It seems that when you create a recovery dvd without that update your update set is useless! And to think that they actually give you the option to erase the recovery partition to save space after the creation of the recovery DVDs.

So that looks like a stalemate to me. The computer is not booting. I use Hiren's boot cd to have it boot to the recovery partition. And whey I attempt a full recovery, I can't get past the final installation pages.

Any chance I could find a Ghost image of a proper recovery partition somewhere or isos of working recovery DVDs?

Thank you/

[rich912]

Hi alandro,

If you are correct in your assumption that this problem is connected with the VAIO Recovery Utility update then it relates to a particular optical drive - Sony DVD+/-RW DW-D56A. Are you sure that this is the optical drive fitted in your machine?

One option would be to purchase a set of recovery media from Sony Support that will hopefully have been created after this problem had been identified – you would obviously need to have this confirmed before committing to purchase.

Another alternative, again on the assumption that it is the DW-D56A drive, would be to fit a different optical drive.

You could also investigate the BIOS settings to check whether your model supports booting from a USB drive.

Installing a retail copy of Windows XP and then all drivers and utilities from the Support site should also work but you will lose all of the pre-installed Sony software.

Unfortunately the recovery media is not available to download from any legitimate source so if the alternative suggestions above are either not practical or don’t work then probably Sony Support is the next step.

Rich

[alandro]

Ok so I guess it was just that set of recovery media. I thankfully made 3 sets of recovery dvds and the second one I had worked! My system was recovered but I got the same error I was getting when I recovered from the partiition! That sucks. I get a BSOD every time I recover my VAIO right before I enter the system for the first time. I will make a complete format of the disk and then attempt to recover again

[rich912]

In the circumstances you describe a BSOD may indicate an underlying hardware problem.

[alandro]

Following your post I firs attempted to install windows off a normal installation media. Windows loaded just fine, and then I downloaded the drivers from the vaio web site and they all loaded perfectly. All devices were running and system was fine. It was just not "factory default". At least now I know that if all else fails, I have the option to install windows from a different media and use the computer from there. That also shows there is no hardware issue. I am under the impression that my installation media are somehow corrupted and that corruption causes the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error I've been getting.

I want to contact support as well. do you know how I could reach them?

[rich912]

alandro wrote:
I want to contact support as well. do you know how I could reach them?

Assuming you are in Greece follow this link, click Vaio and Computing and enter your serial number. Contact methods available will be listed but as the machine is out of warranty it will probably only be a premium rate telephone number.

http://www.sony.gr/support/el/contacts

Rich