Hello,
Every year, I use my System Recovery CD's to clean my computer off. A few days ago, I put in my first disk and shut down my computer. My computer would not read the disk. I restarted it again and selected F2 when the Sony screen showed up. I was then in the BIOS mode. Then I restored the defaults and it restarted the computer and read my disk. After about 10 minutes, it said that it could not finish the restoration and it shut down. Now whenever I start it up, the black Sony logo screen appears then a blank screen with a blinking cursor appears and stays. I can still get to the BIOS screen, but I cannot do anything else. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

-Lauren

Hi Lauren.

I suspect the first thing to do is to give those System Recovery CDs a good clean and try again, in case it is simply a problem related to reading the CDs. If the CDs look a bit the worse for wear, with scuffing and scratches, you could try getting your local video rental store to give them a polish for you, or try getting replacements from Sony.

If the CDs seem OK, I'd suggest you drop the laptop in to a repair technician to be checked. It could be the case that the hard drive is no longer functioning correctly.
What version of Windows does the Vaio use?

The CD's are in very bad condition. I am going to have to try and get some new ones. I suspected a problem with the hard drive, but I'm not a computer whiz. If there is a problem with the hard drive and I have to get a new one, is it worth it to replace? Do they cost a lot? Oh yes, the Vaio uses Windows 2000 Professional. Thanks so much for your help.

-Lauren

Hi Lauren,

It depends on the age of that laptop and whether ot not there are capacity restrictions for the size of hard drives it will accept. If it's an older laptop which will not recognise the larger capacity hard drives which are sold nowadays you may find it difficult to obtain a suitable replacement.

But don't jump to conclusions before you try installing with a workable CD. A possibility would be to try borrowing a Windows CD from someone and seeing if that will install. You'd need to download device drivers for the laptop from Sony's website were you to install that way, and it would not reload any bundled software.