I'm new here.. I have a 2yr old Sony Vaio VGN-TX17GP bought in KL, upgraded to 1GB RAM. It had windows XP. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 & erased windows XP. After unsatisfactory results with Ubuntu, as the sound was gone, the F3, F4 function keys did not work & Ubuntu wouldn’t download some of my old programs. I decided to go back to Windows XP. I insert the Vaio Recovery CD, but my CD drive did not access the CD. It didn’t read nor boot up. As I’m living in Germany, I called up the Sony Service Center. The lady analyist said she could not help since it’s bought in M’sia, she only solves Vaios bought in Germany but said to try pressing F10 when starting the laptop. After following her instruction, my Vaio went dead!! There is not even the sign of “Vaio” - appearance on the screen anymore when it starts. The only thing I see is the green light when it’s switched on, I can hear the CD drive spinning & nothing else, other than a black screen. I would be terribly grateful if somebody with Sony Vaio VGN-TX17GP experience help me get this Vaio back to factory default of windows XP again. I'm desperate.. Thank you.

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i a not an expert in vaio but i think the problem is (BIOS need to reset)

what you can do so you can skep this step
is to reformat your hard disk to NTFs files
so you can setup xp

Hi, thanks for your suggestion. I got my husband (who's alot better than me, in computers) to help me out. Somehow, Vaio came alive with it's Vaio logo, as I switched it on yesterday. We both got so excited & just installed a winXP prog. belonging to our Medion computer in (German language). It worked but does not read the original Vaio Recovery CD. Do you know if I need any start program on the hard drive to start the Recovery CD? Thank you.

Hi, every OS change the sectors of the hard disk to work with it so its diff to recover .
your lap worked that mean that the bios is reset to defult. go to BIOS and search for boot piorety make the CD first device. and try to install XP

Thanks, we tried this already & the CD still doesn't start. We even copied the Recovery CD on the hard drive & started fr. there. A box appeared saying "If you want to start this, insert the CD" We did & still no response. My husband thinks there's a data on the hard drive which enables the Recovery prog. on the CD to run, but this data has been erased by Ubuntu. There is an "Autorun.exe" (not "Setup.exe"), on the Recovery CD.

Hi all, we found out that the DVD-drive of my Vaio is out of order. It can only read CDs, but not DVDs. Since all of our Recovery CDs are on DVDs, we can't do any recovery. We tried copying the DVDs on CDs, but it didn't work, as we don't know the correct sequence order of the datas. We also tried copying them on the Harddrive also with no avail. Sony does not supply it's customers with recovery CDs upon buying the laptop! My question is: 1) Can anybody help me find these recovery CDs for Vaio VGN-TX17GP? 2) This Vaio has Matshita UJ-832D, DVD drive. Sony sells it for Euro 175. I would be very pleased if anybody can recommend me a less expensive drive just as long as it fits Vaio & bears the same function. We tried Samsung, but the top lid was just a little too high & it didn't fit. Thank you.

After one yr of searching for a DVD drive for my Sony Vaio TX series I found an address "VaioRefurbs" in England. I'm so happy that everything turned out well & now my Vaio is working again. If anybody wants Vaio parts do contact: chris@vaiorefurbs.co.uk
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