My new laptop is verklempt

[thatcrazycajun]

Using my two-month-old Sony VAIO laptop at a café today, checking my e-mail when I see a notification that some automatic updates have been installed and a restart is required. I click OK and wait as the machine shuts down. After a minute or so of no apparent activity, I press the power button to reboot.

And the machine goes through the normal loading process as far as the arrow cursor showing on screen, then shuts off and starts back at the beginning. Lather, rinse, repeat. Even holding down F8 and trying a restart in Safe Mode does not work. And of course, there is no install disc that came with the unit.

Tried making a Vista Recovery disk on the only working computer in the house, my Mac. No soap. So I either have to shell out for an extra copy of Vista just to get the repair features, or shell out to pay someone else to repair it.

$650 worth of computer is, for the moment, a rather expensive paperweight...which means not only no portable Internet, but no Skype to call the Songbird with as the headset only seems to work on the VAIO. All advice welcome.

Comments

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

My advice: Reformat the hard drive, install either Windows XP or Ubuntu (or both), and forget Vista until the day pigs pilot time machines.

Then (assuming you've installed Windows) turn off automatic updates and get Autopatcher (the main script is here: download it (running an Administrator-level account into an empty folder and run it; it should then present you with a lot of stuff to choose from to update your machine; tell it what you need, then tell it to go fetch).

Good luck!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Sony tech support?

Linux LiveCD with Skype (http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/general/skype-on-linux)? (This will probably also allow you to at least read your disc and get your data off onto your Mac, so if it comes down to a nuke'n'pave of your hard drive, you won't be totally lost... Mepis is a pretty good Linux distribution, more or less designed for (newer) laptops... but if nothing else it will make your lappy usable as a (slow) Linux net.surfboard until you can get the underlying issue(s) solved. And if you decide you like it you can install it to the hard drive alongside or instead of Winders, and it'll run *much* faster and take less resources...)

And, yeah, echo the sentiment to lose Vista in favor of XP or Linux of some sort.... XP is at least bearable. Vista is t3h EVIL.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Vista is the "every other" version of "Windows".
Expect little or no improvement until the next upgrade.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Ummmmm.... 3.1 was fine, as such things went. 95 was not great, 98 SUCKED, 2k was more or less OK (and was something close to reasonable as MSFT OSen went); XP wasn't great but could be made not to suck by experienced personnel (seen it done, and even documented, but that documentation is alas forever lost to me), Vista ... blows whale chunks. And that's being polite.

Your second statement implies there will be a next version. One is dubious.

Of course, one can also look at the icon and tell me where my loyalties lie.... but then I think you knew that alreddie.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Three scenarios

[a-phoenix-afire.livejournal.com]

1). My son, who's doing this sort of support professionally for an international company said the same thing as Red and Techno vis a vis dumping Vista for XP.

2). When I asked him what to do if you want Vista back but don't have the original disks he said that if your installation of Vista was legal and legit, you should be able to get the recovery or even original install disks from VAIO for a nominal fee. $10 -$20.

3). If your install is not legit, then see item 1)., and this time make backups and recovery disks BEFORE the crash.

Good Luck.

[poltr1]

This has been a lousy weekend for computer crashes. Someone else on my LJ-friends list had a system crash and lost their data.

I second technoshaman's suggestion for Sony tech support. They should at least send you a system CD so you can run the Recovery Console.

I would think the laptop could run other OSes, to a point. bootdisk.com has image files to create bootable floppies for nearly every version of Windows and DOS. (But not Vista. Alas.) This should get you to a point where you can at least read the hard drive, not run anything on it.

If you get Vista up and running again, turn off automatic updates. You may also want to consider getting a version of Linux (I'm contemplating a switch to Ubuntu 7.10 in the near future) and installing it on the laptop, creating a dual-boot machine. Unlike technoshaman, I'm not a Linux evangelist, but it's gotta be better than Vista.

Wish there was more I can do to help.

A postscript....

[poltr1]

To be more precise with the Yiddish, the laptop is kaput, and you're verklempt. I would be too if my laptop or desktop went kaput on me.

(/me gives a middle-finger salute in the direction of Redmond, WA on your behalf.)

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

My Windows machine crashed (was running XP Pro), so now I'm on my Mac laptop. I have an expensive paperweight here, too. But...I'm getting a new system in a couple of weeks and we're going to recover the data from this one. Good luck!

Few suggestions

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Have you contacted Sony or the place where you bought the computer?

Also, if you'd like, call me and you can use my skype to call your beloved.

Re: Few suggestions

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

Already talked to Best Buy; they want two Benjamins to even look at the damn thing and can't get it back to me sooner than 5-7 business days. For that price, I can get our tech contractor at work to fix it and have it back to me in two. Will contact Sony re getting some sort of restore disk shipped.

And thank you for the offer of Skype usage; depending on how things go with the repairs, I may yet take you up on that.