Sony Vaio Computer (thai Model)

[kaz49]

Hi, my laptop I purchased at Pantip Plaza two years ago has crashed, cannot get it to boot, did a search on Thai visa and tried some of previous suggestions here. My stuff is arriving from Bangkok shortly that has the original box and paperwork in it but I am fairly sure I was never given recovery disks, it was all set up in the shop when I bought it in Bangkok. Has anyone had experience with laptops purchased in Thailand and getting them repaired/data recovered in home country (out of warranty). I called the sony service centre here and they think its a virus and suggested to just delete hard drive and get a new one and reinstall? Also the battery has packed it in, I can buy a new battery here I am told.

Important docs etc I did save onto a stick and back up disks sometime ago, but there would be photos/music still on there. Any advice appreciated.

[MKAsok]

I have a Vaio and wasn't given any recovery disks. There's a hidden partition on the HD containg the recovery information, and a tool to burn this info to DVDs, so you're left with 2 recovery disks. They should have told you this was the first thing you need to do when you got the computer. Someone at Fortune/Pantip should be able to get it working to some degree (assuming the HD hasn't failed completely) and presumably the recovery partition should still be there...

[Ciaphas]

I had a similar problem with my Viao brought from Thailand, wouldn't boot or when it did boot both processors ran at 100 percent making it difficult to do anything. I downloaded a vista recovery disk from Microsoft, rebooted of that disk and it repaired whatever was wrong with the computer by going back in a restore point.

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

I have a VAIO and the recovery disc is partitioned on your harddrive. Start up your computer and press the F8 button several times. Your computer will enter recovery mode.

You can try to restore back to a reset point before you do a total recovery. That could get you to a point where you can boot your laptop.

Also, if you have an external HD, you can copy your files onto the external HD, before you wipe everything out with a total recovery.

If your battery is shot, you obviously will need to replace that before you can access the recovery program.

Edited March 21, 2009 by zaphodbeeblebrox