Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 04:00:45 +0000 From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] OT: VAIO PCG-505F notebook system restoration
From: Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The first thing I'd try is putting the hard drive into another machine and seeing what happens. There's a small but non-zero chance that it's the BIOS and not the hard drive.
Really!? I booted the system from the FDD using Partition Magic boot FDs, and it did see the drive. But it didn't show it to be partitioned at all. If I can figure out how to pull the HDD, it would be interesting to see what another system sees.
How the heck do you get into BIOS on the darned thing? I tried hitting DEL at boot and holding down the ESC key like the Libs... but nada. Didn't see anything at boot about it either, which has me a bit worried about the main board.
Otherwise perhaps it's a virus of some sort? (ironic given he was doing virus updates!) - I can't remember the name of it but there is one that corrupts the first part of the hard drive, killing the partition table (amongst other things) - I had to help a friend recover from one of those years ago.
Wow... really? I've been telling people that there's prbably no chance at all that a virus could possibly delete an entire partition. But now that I think about it, I suppose &%#*ing up the MBR might just do it.
As for easiest way to load 98SE, my suggestion is to repartition it in the Vaio, put it into another computer, sys the drive and copy the win98 install files (I generally create c:\windows\options\cabs and copy them there, that way I don't have to stuff around in the registry telling Windows its default setup file directory isn't somewhere else). The only thing to watch is that Windows setup will see the existing c:\windows and suggest to install into c:\windows.000, just tell it to install into c:\windows, it'll listen to you eventually!
Well... if I repartition it in the VAIO with PM from boot floppies... from what it looks like I may be creating a completely new C: partition, so it oughtn't have problems with a pre-existing x:\Windows installation. I'm still wondering if the CD-ROM (or possibly DVD-ROM drive from looking at the system specs online) will be able to be accessed in DOS, booted from a FDD.
Matt
Libretto list info:
Libretto list archive #1: http://www.technoir.nu/cgi-bin/libretto.cgi
Libretto list archive #2: http://www.mail-archive.com/libretto@basiclink.com/
To unsubscribe: http://www.technoir.nu/libretto/list/2004/msg01419.html
From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Well... after checking around the net and not finding much, I'm back here at the trusty Libretto suppot list to ask another off topic question.
A friend's Sony VAIO PCG-505F notebook all of a sudden went belly-up the other night after a couple of hours of loading virus updates, and then working fine for an hour or so. When booted up again, it gave that fatal "No operating system found" DOS message. No C: when booting from FDD. And Partition Magic reporting no partition of any kind at all on the 4GB HDD!
At least it saw the HDD, so I'm guessing it's okay.
Why that happened is a huge area of curiosity to me... but I'll skip to asking if anyone knows how to go about reloading W98SE on this system. I've downloaded the few drivers available on the Sony support pages, and am wondering if I'm going to have to pull the HDD, and load the W98SE setup files onto the drive via the desktop.
One of only 2-3 driver downloads was for the external DVD drive, so I'm guessing that it's not going to boot from the drive, or recognize it at all in DOS. Anyone know anything about that?
In a day or so I'l be going over there, and hopefully will have everything I need to get the minimum going on the ailing puppy...
Thx,
Matt
