I have a Sony Vaio VGN-A130 and it's probably a 2004 or 2005 model. I borrowed it off of a friend, who wanted to throw it away. When I received it, it was formatted and needed to have everything put back on it the way it was with a recovery CD. After recovery, everything was running and I could connect to the internet (both mozilla and internet explorer were working) but, I would get a lot of pop-ups and even if I were working in mozilla, internet explorer would pop-up with advertisements. I also could not install a lot of newer virus and spy-ware programs like ad-aware. I figured XP needed an upgrade to service pack 2. After the first set of upgrades and installations from windows update, everything was still in working order but, after upgrading to and installing service pack 2, I can not connect to the internet at all. I have tried playing with the firewall settings and turning them off even but, no luck. The wireless connection shows it's connected to my network with 'excellent' signal but when I load mozilla, the message I get is: "The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading" Can anyone help me with this? Does anyone out there have a vaio vgn-a130 with similar problems? Please let me know. Any help is appreciated. Thank you very, very much in advance. Sorry for the long message here but I thought I should put all the information out there so it's easier to help. Thanks again.

Maybe the VAIO-A130 has already been infected with a virus or spyware, before you were able to install SP2 and the other security paches. The problem is, that an unpatched Windows installation with access to the internet is infected by Virus or Spyware within 30 seconds. That's a big problem. If your internet connection is DSL and connects automatically when needed, Windows tries to connect immediately after a fresh installation. You can say, Windows always tries to connect to the internet, independend of whether it should or not. Anyway, if the VAIO is able to connect to the internet it just tooks round about 20 seconds to get infected by a virus or spyware. If you already downloaded the SP2, burn it on CD. Make sure, that the VAIO has no connection through the internet, to avoid new infection during the installation process. Use the recovery CD to make a fresh windows installation on the VAIO. Install SP2 from the CD. After that, it's the first time, your windows has a rumming firewall so that you are a bit more secure. But there are a lot of other security issues at this stage. So now you can connect the VAIO to the internet. At the very first now, YOU MUST update your windows with all neccessary security patches from the Microsoft update site and restart the computer when required. When done, install Antivirus and Anti-Spyware Software. All in all, now it should work. Paul

Your problem probably stems from the fact the system was infected with some form of adware or spyware before you installed SP2. If the recovery CD restors the system to factory state that may mean Sony has something in their instal files that in incompatible with SP2. Check at their website for any info on fixes needed prior to installation of SP2. A lot of OEM builders released pre-SP2 fixes that must be run before installing SP2. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

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