HELP PLEASE!! Sony Vaio VGN-C1S

[Hottee]

Hi guys
VERY new to this - first posting. Hubby bought me the above for Christmas. Everything going ok[ish] - just occasional non-starts, i.e. lighting up but no screen, but I thought, hey I can live with it. Now this morning turned it on, same problem. Took out battery, started from AC adaptor, replaced battery etc etc. Now all I get is the Vaio start-up screen which then goes to "A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Followed that prompt and NOTHING! Cannot get past that.
Many thanks for your assistance.

[Blencogo]

Hi Hottee and welcome to Club Vaio.

It sounds like either a hard disc problem or some corrupt files in your boot sector.

Can you open in Safe Mode? When you see the Vaio logo press F8 repeatedly. Do you see a Startup Options Screen?. With the up/down arrow keys select Safe Mode and press Enter. If your Vaio starts up, let us know. Try this a few times as it may not work first time.

Do you have many programs that you have added yourself? If not it is probably best to do a full restore to factory settings. At the Vaio logo press F10 repeatedly to start the Recovery Wizard. Choose to Restore your Computer and then to Recover Drive C: and follow the prompts. Make sure you are on mains power and DO NOT interrupt the restore process which may take some time.



EDIT: To avoid confusion, I will remove your identical thread in the Solutions Room.

[Hottee]

Hi Blencogo

Thanks for replaying and thanks also for deleting the other post!
I have repeatedly pressed F8 as you suggested but can't get anywhere with it. The only accessible key seems to be F2 that goes to the BIOS setup utility and that's where I am at the moment. I fortunately backed up by word docs and photos onto CD. I have loaded Word 2003 from CD so I can reload them. I also made some restore disks a week or so ago. I'm not sure how I can run them tho if I can't get started....
Thanks

[Hottee]

Hi again, I've managed to access F10 and it's doing a hardware diagnostics at the moment [with 111 minutes remaining!!] - seems to have hung there!

[Blencogo]

Has it definitely hung or is it still working slowly? Is the hard drive light coming on occasionally? Are you past the screen that asks you to choose from three options ( Recover Drive C: etc)?

[Hottee]

Hi again Blencogo
Just completing stage 3 - Application Recovery. Working on the assumption that it successfull !!, what software do you suggest that I delete. I'll reload my MS Office package, so do you suggest that I maybe delete MS Works?

[Blencogo]

Lets hope everything works OK. You will have to set everything up again from scratch.

If you don't need Works, uninstall it in Control Panel -> Add/Remove programs but this is not really essential as you are not running out of disc space (yet).

Fingers Crossed!!

[Hottee]

Ha Ha - not not yet! THANK you so much for all your help. I may be back.............. Let's hope not, but I don't trust hope these days [ggg]. I've still got the daunting task of reloading AOL! - Another experience. Well it seems that I've got to restart now as everything seems to have been loaded successfully. Yes, I'm up and running to the welcome sound of the chimes - yipee! Incidentally, should I now create further Recovery Media Kit or do I not have to worrry about that now?
Many thanks

[Blencogo]

Hi Hottee,

No, you don't need to make another set of discs - but it is a good 'belt and braces' safeguard to have more than one set.

Good luck - hope the reinstallation works and you can get AOL online!!

[kee-lo_]

Sounds to me like something was interfering with your boot up, glad you're back on your feet.