Hi, My cousin has a Sony Vaio laptop. I want to reload XP because it is all jammed up. I backed up all his stuff, put in my XP CD, and it freezes after a while. This happens both when I load the CD from within the curreny XP environment, and when I boot w/ the CD in the drive. It starts to load, and than freezes. He said his laptop didn't come with a CD, and I didn't see a recovery partition/folder anywhere. I usually use a dell cd I have - along with the code on each computer, and it has worked on EVERY computer I have ever done regardless of manufacture. This is the first time I did a Sony w/ out the Sony disk. I am hearing that doing an F10 at boot will allow you to create a recovery CD?? Is this true? Thanks!!

Make sure the disk is clean. I am assuming that it is a oem disk, meaning that it probably wouldn't work on the sony.

It is clean - it works on Dell, HP's, Compaq's, Acers, Clones, etc... but for some reason, it didn't work on this Sony. I even tried a retail XP that I have and still froze during the install.

Once you see the VAIO logo on screen, keep tapping the F10 and it should give you an option to either create the Recovery Disk or to perform the recover from the Recovery partition. The manual or handbook that came with it should tell you. Sometimes it is simjply a case of pressing the right keys when booting to get the recovery option done direct from the hidden partition. Go to the following URL: Sony VAIO Manuals and select your friends VAIO model to see exactly how. If the HDDR is not available, it may still be possible to get a set of Recovery Discs direct from Sony VAIO support, but they will cost approx £30+ vat, (or at least they used to when I worked for Sony VAIO support in 2006), and the VAIO will need to be registered before this can be done. Contact details here: Contact Sony VAIO Support Let me know how you get on. JP