Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

[wwarby]

Hi all,

I've spent probably about 30 hours over the last couple of weeks establishing the best procedure for making a clean break from the factory image on my VGX-XL201 VAIO Media Center PC. After many CD-Rs, many hours of Googling and many hours of watching the "formatting C:\" progress bar roll slowly onwards, I finally seem to have my PC just how I like it - with all the software I want and none (or at least hardly any) of the software Sony wants me to have.

I extracted files from both the Application Recovery and System Recovery DVDs, customised an MCE 2005 installation CD with nLite and installed a couple of extra bits and pieces from the web to get to where I am now, and there was a lot of trial and error involved.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I want to guage interest in a thorough write up of the process I went through. To get a media center PC to clean install is not the same as with a laptop, and all the information I needed, whilst largely available on the Internet was all over the place. I'd like others to benefit from the time I've spent on this and so I'd like to write a detailed how-to. However, I don't want to spend my time doing this unless I know people are going to read it. If I write such a guide, will people find it useful?

[Thalamus.]

Hi wwarby,

Several members visit the board in search of information such as you've mentioned without ever posting, so I think if you have the time to post your detailed How-To I'm sure some members would find it useful.. :smileygrin:

[wwarby]

Thanks mate,

I'll start work on it now. My plan is to write a complete guide from start to finish that anybody should be able to follow. I'll do it as a PDF or something so that I can put lots of screenshots in it, and post it here when I'm done.

-William

[wwarby]

OK,

Here it is, after 12 hours of work, version 1.0 of my 51 page guide to performing a clean install of MCE 2005 on an XL201 Media Center PC. The document goes into a huge amount of detail but you can skip over the bits you don't want to read. Better to give too much information than not enough I say.

PDF: http://shared.wwarby.com/vgx-xl201-clean-install-guide.pdf
MS Word: http://shared.wwarby.com/vgx-xl201-clean-install-guide.doc

I had a problem trying to use the product key provided with my VAIO. It's all explained in the guide. I would be grateful if people couple post to this thread reporting their experiences - at least for a little while I'll show an interest in updating this document, especially if between us we can get a robust method for using the Sony-provided Windows product keys which works.

-William

[Blencogo]

Thank you William - you have been busy - excellent work.

I'll make this a sticky thread!

:smileygrin:

[kee-lo_]

Yes I agree with Blencogo, excellent work William.

[Seawit]

Indeed quite an excellent professional level work. And i believe that these guidelines can be used in other computers as well.
Well done!!!

[wwarby]

Thanks for the compliments guys I often post asking for help on forums so it's good to give something back when you can. The instructions in the guide need some validation from other users so hopefully that will be forthcoming from owners of the same or similar models to mine. There is definitely an issue regarding the use of product keys provided with the VAIO which we need to get to the bottom of. I'll probably work more on this problem because I'd really rather be using my own product key rather than one which is provided through my MSDN subscription from work.

I'll probably do a new guide for Vista on this media center PC when the driver set is officially released.

[kee-lo_]

Hopefully you'll get some feedback from it, however positive or negitive it is.

[@7908848805001668]

Just bought a 201 - and picked this up. Thanks in advance, I think it'll be helpful. Have just upgraded the memory and added 2 hard discs. Will now look around to see if it's easy to RIAD 0 the two new discs without going through the Recovery disk process in the manual.

Will start a new thread on this perhaps.

AndyR