Help needed with restore

[stephenmcavoy]

Hello, I just bought a new Vaio FZ21S. I wanted to start with a clean install of vista minus all the pre-installed junk. I made the recovery disks and thought I would be able to return to the original factory state if needed. I erased the hard disk and reinstalled Vista. I reinstalled the drivers from the Vaio Recovery utility and a few programs like Works, Control Centre etc.
My problem is that some of these don't work properly now. Everytime I launch Control Centre it says "a program has stopped Control Centre working"....but no details. Vaio update doesn't do anything when I launch. My volume buttons also won't work. There probably more that I havn't discovered yet.
I've tried doing the factory restore from the recovery disks but it won't work presumably because the recovery partition is gone. How do I get these working or how do I restore back to the original factory state?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Steve

[Blencogo]

Hi Steve and welcome to Club Vaio.

You should be able to recover your Vaio to its original state from the Recovery Discs. Put the first disc in the drive and re-boot the Vaio. This should bring up the "System Recovery Options" Screen and you can choose what sort of recovery you want.

If the discs don't work, you will have to contact Sony Vaio-Link Support for a duplicate set. They will normally charge you £30 but tell them that the disc creation process seems to be faulty.

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/contacts/contacts.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&tp=vaio&cc=en_GB&cm=phone

It is always worth checking to see if the Recovery Partition still exists on your hard disc. To do this, turn on your Vaio and at the first Vaio Logo screen tap F10 repeatedly. If the partition is still there, this will start the Recovery.

Read the Recovery and Troubleshooting Guide (Page 36): -

ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Manuals/RecoTS/2007Q3_RT_EN.pdf

[stephenmcavoy]

Thanks Blencogo, Theres certainly something not working right about the recovery disks. When I try the option to recover the drive to the original factory state it says something about the drive being too small or not recognised.
I also checked the partitions by pressing F10 at the Vaio Logo on startup but it only list 1 partition. Seems like the recovery partition is gone then.