My Brother bought A laptop A few months ago it's A PCG-FRV28. When He got it the Laptop worked fine. But recently we got A fresh copy of windows XP pro. But During the installation it said that it could not find A couple of files, and to insert the windows XP CD. Even though the disc was already in the drive and everything. One of the files was IEexplorer.exe I believe. I do not remember what the other file was. I had no choice but to continue with the installation. after it was done windows booted up, however instead of the normal blue windows XP start menu I am greeted with the windows 95/98 gray start menu. And A standard blue wallpaper. I tried to change the theme to windows XP but the option does not appear in the menu. only windows classic. I tried installing the sony drivers I had stored in A seperate partition hoping it was just A graphics card issue but every time I try to install the driver. It just tells Me that it's for A different model. And to make matters worse internet explorer is not on the computer at all. And when I try to read A disc, it just responds "IO device error". So what exactly can I do. I am sure there is A way to repair it, I am just not sure how. Some help would be greatly appricated PS: we do not have any sony, made windows XP discs as it was not provided with the computer. However there is An extra partition on hardrive, that we didn't mess with. It is around 5 gigabytes in size. I think it was used to hold all of the sony software on it.
hey i have a sony vaio desktop... anyway u can order a system recovery CD through vaio if you choose... if not, try to go to control panel and look for something called VAIO RECOVERY WIZARD... if its there double click and follow the prompts to return the computer to its factory installed state... after that u can attempt to upgrade ur windows version again... Note: if u use recovery wizard u will lose all of ur files etc... it will go back to exactly the way it was when u bought it. If that doesnt work, check you will be forced to order the CD from sony, and then u can format ur computer... there may be ways to do this without formatting or using the recovery wizard but i'm just telling u what will probably be the easiest.
Well, I used A reguler copy of Windows XP. So there isn't any viao sofware of the machine. Also it can't read discs, either. So that rules out both options. The only media it can read is My CF card through A USB memory reader. Edit: since It can read My CF card. Is there A way to copy A program onto the laptop using My CF card that will repair the lost windows files? if so what program should I use?
Okay, I just got A Email response from sony. They said that if You press F10 during the boot sequence You can access the sony vaio recovery wizard without the need for A disc or anything. So I used that and I was able to recover all of the programs and software. However the DVD drive still doesn't work. It still gives Me that I/O error crap. But since I know it can't be windows fault this time, it has to be the drive. Looks like it need to be replaced...
