Left my sony vaio laptop on overnight and got up the next morning to a blank screen. Nothing I tried would get the laptop working - I managed to get the data off the d: partition but couldnt access anything on c: partition. The laptop is about 6 years old and was bought from a sony dealer with windows 7 pre-installed.

 

Took it in to two local shops, neither could do anything with it, said the hard drive was gone.

 

The original hard drive was a 500GB Seagate so I went to the IT mall in khon kaen and bought a replacement drive, same make and size.

 

They offered to put it in for me so I gave them my recovery disks and left them to it. Four hours later its still not working and they tell me the recovery disks are no good but they are working around the problem and eventually give me a working laptop back.

 

The next day when trying to do a windows update I realise they have put a fake copy of windows on ( I had genuine windows 7 supposedly on the recovery disks). 

 

I decided then to take the laptop to a sony service centre along with the old hard drive. 

 

They've had the laptop for 5 days now after saying it would be ready in a day. When my daughter spoke to them today they said my new hard drive doesn't support the version of windows that sony uses and that I also need to buy a bigger hard drive.

 

I know that the graphics driver was specific to sony because if I tried to update it from the manufacturers site it wouldnt do it but I'm finding it hard to believe that the windows version they provide would be tied to a specific hard drive.

 

Has anybody else come across a situation like this where a brand new hard drive won't load windows?

 

It sounds like rather than installing Windows 7 they are trying to copy an OEM system image to your new 500GB HDD. If the new drive is slightly smaller than the system image they are trying to copy it won't work unless they reduce the partition size.

 

Do you still have the original Windows product key? Usually with OEM W7 that would be a Microsoft sticker either on the back of the notebook or on the power supply.

 

If you have that, it would be an easy job to reinstall Win 7 on your new HDD.

Yes I have the product key which I showed to the sony people, what I don't have are the windows disks as it came pre-installed.

Most Thai IT people are astoundingly incompetent.

 

If you have the product key then just reinstall Windows yourself: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

 

Visit the laptop manufacturer's website and download the correct drivers for your model onto a USB key first though.

 

If you have already successfully installed Win10 via the free offer on that laptop then you can reinstall Win10 directly without installing 7. See here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Again, download the manufacturer's Win10 drivers first, just to be on the safe side.

Sony Vaio drivers can be found here.

 

https://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&PRODTYPE=1,24,72#

7 minutes ago, KittenKong said:

Most Thai IT people are astoundingly incompetent.

 

If you have the product key then just reinstall Windows yourself: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7

 

Visit the laptop manufacturer's website and download the correct drivers for your model onto a USB key first though.

 

If you have already successfully installed Win10 via the free offer on that laptop then you can reinstall Win10 directly without installing 7. See here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Again, download the manufacturer's Win10 drivers first, just to be on the safe side.

So its no problem if I apply my product key to a fresh download of windows?

2 minutes ago, nahkit said:

So its no problem if I apply my product key to a fresh download of windows?

 

No problem.

 

Entering your product key on the download page should ensure that you get the correct version of Win 7 (Pro, home etc)

Quote

they said my new hard drive doesn't support the version of windows that sony uses and that I also need to buy a bigger hard drive.

 

That sounds like shi'ite.

2 hours ago, Chicog said:

 

That sounds like shi'ite.

Ok, went back to sony and the 'bigger' hard drive thing is nothing to do with gigabytes, they say it should be about 1mm thicker!

 

When I handed the laptop over to them this hard drive was already fitted in place but now they are saying it doesnt fit and cant be used.

 

I've taken the laptop back off them.

That's not a big problem. You are lucky it isn't the other way around.

 

2.5" HDD's (and some SSD's) come in 2 sizes - 7mm and 9.5mm. To fit a 7mm in a 9.5mm slot you just need a spacer (shim). Sometimes the spacer is supplied with new 7mm drives.

 

The connector is the same for both sizes. The only difference is the thickness.

 

Personally I would just use a couple of strips of 3M double sided tape. I have done that before when fitting a second drive in place of the DVD. It is plenty strong enough. 

 

I wouldn't bother going back to that Sony service centre ever again.