Share your experience!
Hi there. I have just bought an FZ31Z and loving it. After recieving my laptop I made a partition to install Ubuntu on as I needed Linux which meant that the default boot loader was the grub loader that is installed when Ubuntu is installed.
I hadn't made any recovery DVDs and soon found myself without access to Vista as I had messed up the BCD because I wanted the Windows bootloader back as the default. I lost access to my Vista partition but could run ubuntu. In Ubuntu I could see my hidden partition as a normal one and had full access to it so I backed up the whole 10.2GB onto my iPod.
Is there any way I can restore the use of my hidden partion as I cannot load the recovery using the F10 function or any other way I could think of as I need some of the pre-installed apps such as WinDVD, InstantOn etc. The recovery partition is still on my harddrive but I cannot initiate the recovery I do not want to purchase a set of recovery disks as I have already spent £1300 on a laptop and have the data but no way of using it, to my knowledge.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Utsav.
PS. In the mean time I am using a fresh install of vista without any sony software which renders some of the feature on this laptop useless.
Hello everybody. I managed to make a set of recovery DVDs but when I try to boot using disk 1 I get CDBOOT: Could not find BOOTMGR just after the VAIO bios screen. Any idea what my next step would be?
This laptop just keeps wanting to annoy me with glitch after glitch 😞
You shouldn't blame the laptop for this. If you have a basic vista installatio, go to the download section of the support site and grab 5he drivers and utilities packs. After spending a few hours loading them, use the VAIO recovery tool. It will have access to the hidden partition.
As soon as the recovery is over, Make A Proper Set Of Recovery Discs!!
Nice as Ubuntu is, it won't give you full access to all this laptop's features.
Ive downloaded and installed all the available components and drivers from the VAIO-LINK website for this model and I still cant access the restoration partition. Ive managed to restore all the programs using the DVDs Ive made apart from the WINDVD BD which I can live without as I have a PS3. I can use the blueray drive to back things up though which is still quite handy.