VAIO Recovery VGN-TX1HP/W

[joslohan]

Hi, I have a bit of a problem, a while back motherboard of TX1HP/W fried so I found a replacement and swapped it with TX2HP/W, both same XP-Pro.

all was well until a virus ruined my xp copy. now if I try to use vaio recovery utility, it says "this utility cannot be used, please confirm model."

I tried both hard disk and recovery discs utilities. i researched motherboard b4 replacement, it is exact same power and initial serials match too. same specs, only drives are different by 20Gb apart.

What should I do???

[Blencogo]

The Recovery Utility is model specific so I guess there is a mismatch between the recovery media and the model type listed in the BIOS chip.  Recovery discs for the TX1 will not work if the BIOS thinks the model is a TX2.

Go into the BIOS screens by tapping F2 when you see the Vaio Logo.  What model is listed in the BIOS?

Where did the second hard drive come from?  Was it from the TX2 motherboard model?  If the hard drive and the motherboard match, have you tried starting the recovery by tapping F10 during boot?

[joslohan]

All parts are genuine from TX1HP/W incl the drive, which has recovery partition of TX1HP/W, but that also has been damaged by malware. i have recovery discs of TX1HP/W safe though but when i run them i get 'please check model number' error. is there any way to over ride this error?

BIOS displays TX2HP_W. I have thought about upgrading recovery utility, then thought otherwise. Due to OS not being for TX2HP/W,  drive being smaller and it may cause other malfunction.

Is there any way to re-image the drive without using recovery utility??? cos that would help

Message was edited by: joslohan