Sony Vaio VGC-LM1M Bios problem.

[DickyMint51]

Hi, I have a Sony Vaio VGC-LM1M, not long after buying it I had lots of problems with in caused by the graphics card. Sony kindly repaired it for me at no cost. I had already purchase the recovery disc's from sony in an endeavor to repair it and obviously this had failed, it was only by accident that I found out about the graphics card failure. Not long after I got the commputer back I noticed that I could not use the Sony updates because the Sony updates sight said it did not reconise my computer, I suspect this is because the bios was altered at Sony. Not being computer literate I do not know how to alter the bios in order to make the sony updater reconise my computer. Has anyone any suggestions please?

Regards,

David.

[DickyMint51]

Hi, Just to bring you all up to date, my computer is up and running. I managed to kick start it with the shop bought Vista then managed to install all of the drivers using both the recovery discs and the sony on site drivers. Although my new hard drive was origianlly 3TB after all the upgrades an all my clutter I still have 1.65 TB free to play with. I have the ram up from 2gb to 4gb and all is well, "Just got to deal with the noisey fans Any ideas short of replacing both of the?

Davivid.

[rich912]

Hi David,

Good to hear that you have cracked the install part.

Have you checked Disk Management to make sure that the full 3TB is recognised? Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.

As for the fan noise did you check the fan and vents for dust when you had the back off?

Rich

[DickyMint51]

Hi Rich,

Thank you for the reply.

I checked the disc partition, it has it down as Disc 0 and it has divided it into three (C:) has2038.08 GB NTFS ( Heathy boot page file crash dump primary Partition. There is another partition with 746.52 GB Unallocated and one 9.92GBHealth ( EISA Conf ) I would like to allocate it all to C drive if its possible.

I did clean out the fans when I had the back off, I need to check if I can buy replacements or better still an upgraded fan.

David.

[rich912 · Accepted solution]

Hi David,

That was the answer I was expecting unfortunately.

The ESIA partition is the hidden recovery media that would have been installed by your recovery disks. Should you ever need to recover to factory settings and your disks don't work for any reason then this is your lifeline - so leave well alone.

The unallocated space of 746GB is what remains after the MBR limit of 2.2TB and unfortunately I understand that this on a 32Bit system is not accessible.

I suggest you Google 'MBR 2TB limit Windows Vista' for further reading but any possible solutions will be for a 64Bit OS.

Rich

[DickyMint51]

Hello Rich,

Once again thank you for your help and imput. I will have to look into changing over from 32 bits to 64Bit OS  maybe an upgrade would do the trick? either way I will post any progress I make.

Regards,

David.

[rich912]

Hi David,

Unfortunately an upgrade from 32Bit to 64Bit is not an option. You will need to clean install a 64Bit retail version and then install any 64Bit drivers and utilities available from Sony Support. Note that very few are available from the Support link posted earlier so I advise caution...

Rich

[DickyMint51]

Hi Rich,

Thank you for your reply, Considering the time I have had to spend getting my desktop back up and running I do not think that just to convert to 64bits would be worth a full install again. I am led to believe that 32bits is almost as good as 64 and for what I use my computer for I dont think I would benifit me. Having said that I will continue to better the computer I have in the hopes I can continue using it a bit longer, it might be a few years old but it was expensive when I bought it back in 2007. In the meantime keep up the good work it is much appreciated.

Regards,

David.

[rich912]

A wise decision David:smileywink:

[davsmith3551]

I have read through all this discussuion and it follows my problems.I cannot do any of the technical stuff due to no skill or experience.  I am thinking its all over for me and a new PC is on the cards.  I have no idea of likely costs of having Sony Repair  guys take a look ( with a £36 deposit) just to get started.  From your  comments above it looks serious.

Ah well !

[DickyMint51]

Hi Dave,

Not sure if you have the same computer as myself, but if its any consolation I have no knowledge or skill either, just a will to get my computer back to normal. Sony would much rather you buy a new computer but when I bought this in 2007 if my memory serves me it was well over a £1000 maybe even more, so not being in work a new one would be out of the question. Good luck with whatever you decide.

David.