Vaio VGN-AR31E black screen and no recovery disk-HELP?

[roche4u]

Hi everybody

when i bought my laptop 3 years ago i understood nothing about pc's or jargon and therefore have only come to understand more recently. Now I understand you should build your own recovery disk as Sony doesn't supply a recovery disk when you buy the laptop.

Well I hope I'm not stuffed as my laptop went blue screen the other day and then it gave options-start windows normally or safe mode,etc...I tried start normally and it then said i would need to use Windows 32 bit/config disk for operating system and press to continue for repair

I don't have any disk and have never built one of my own. What can I do?

Can anyone help me?

Have I lost all my data except for some a while ago I put to external hard drive or is there anyway to recover system with a disk to purchase or download?

OR do i have to have system formatted and lose all?

PLEASE HELP!!!!!!! Rochelle

[rich912]

Hi Rochelle and welcome.

There is a possibility that a Windows Vista Recovery Disc may help if it is just a matter of reconfiguring some operating settings as opposed to reinstalling the system.

Such a disk can be downloaded for free from the following location.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

If this has no effect then you can purchase a set of recovery disks from Sony Support.

[rich912]

Hi Roche,

As you have noticed the downloaded application is in ISO format. There are several free burning utilities such as Free ISO Burner

http://www.freeisoburner.com/

A Google search will provide more.

Yes your laptop probably does have a recovery partition which can be accessed by tapping F10 at boot, when you see the Vaio logo. Unfortunately this will restore the machine to factory settings and you will lose all data.

If there is data on the machine that you really can’t lose then it will be necessary to remove the hard drive and place it in a USB Caddy in order to recover the data to another PC.

Try the Vista Recovery Disc first and if this doesn’t work then come back for further guidance on removing the hard drive and data recovery.

All the best,

Rich

Edit: I should have said that a factory reset will lose all data on the C drive (dependant on the option that you choose). If you have stored your data on the D drive then this may be the more straight forward option - again please come back for further information and someone will be pleased to help.

[roche4u]

hi again Rich

much appreciated advice which I will give a go

I've absorbed what you've said and try those options and let u know how i get on

have a good evening

Roche

[roche4u]

Hi Rich,

thanks so much

I've just downloaded Bittorrent which i'm cagey cos i worry can that harm my parents laptop i have borrowed to try and get info to sort mine out?

and then whilst its downloading i dont know how to get that onto disk?

the other company that charges for ISO image burning to CD but can i do it without them?

I have empty CD disks but what do I do?

Sony are murder when trying to get in touch with them...I  tried on Friday and had no luck

I dont really want to format my system as i have so many files that i hope are not lost?

should they still be there somewhere as ive read that sony laptops have the recovery partition

if not I've learned a hard lesson

it just says on the black screen that comes up that the registry may be corrupt or missing

Roche