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hidesil

I foolishly upgraded to Vista Ultimate! Now I want to reset my VAIO AR11M to factory state BUT it won't let me run the VAIO Recovery Tool saying 'this is not a VAIO'!

I didn't make a set of Recovery Disks (idiot!). Is there a way I can get at the recovery partition and create one now?

Thanks,
Hiran

Blencogo

Hi Hiran,

Have you tried: -

1. Enter the BIOS (tap F2 at the first Vaio logo on booting) and choose to reset the BIOS Defaults. Save and Exit.

2. On re-boot start the Vaio Recovery Utility by tapping F10 at the first Vaio logo screen and follow the on-screen prompts.

Dekesh

just out of curiousity what is the reason(s) that you want to go back to xp because i too have an AR11M and am considering installing vista?

hidesil

Faaaantastic!
I didn't know that. It worked.
Thanks.

hidesil

Dekesh,
I couldn't get the speakers to work. The new audio driver only gave 'optical' as a choice of output. Everything else I used in the month since upgrade (to Vista Ultimate) 'seemed' to work, except I occasionally got a flickering screen. And ClickToDVD does not work with Vista. (and perhaps many other apps I haven't tried)

What I should have done, and I am doing now, is to install Vista as a dual boot from XP, instead of as an upgrade from XP - ie. installig Vista over XP on the C drive. You can't (and I couldn't when I tried) install XP Pro as a dual boot from already-installed Vista. AND you can't go back to XP Pro from Vista because apparently Vista alters the whole boot mechanism. Hence the need to start all over again via the Recovery Tool.

Shall report back when upgrade completed.

hidesil

Vista Ultimate dual boot went great. No problems at all. All the sound problems I had before not there now.
Thanks for all the help.

kee-lo_

You might want to make an image of your fully working new OS and drivers with something like Acronis TrueImage, this'll save you time and effort next time you need to reformat the hard disk.