Welcome to my hell. Sony Vaio VGN-FS810/w. Apparently a model that very few people have, or do not have problems with.
If you are short on time and need the nitty gritty here it is, if you have time or need more details, please read:
NITTY:
XP install on vaio, xp will not see hard drive no matter what hard drive is installed.
XP setup fails frequently for keyboard layout error.
END NITTY
I have a user that brought this laptop to me because it was littered with spyware. I reccomended a wipe and reload. I backup the data to an external and after some investigating i realized;
Bad CRROM drive. Not a big deal, sony has a sweet built in recovery dohickey. After countless hours of trying to boot into this recovery system (keyboard does not work very well outside of windows.) I finally get in (3 usb keyboards hooked up as well). Run the recovery, windows boots, yay, but no.
Logs me in with a guest account. Can't do anything. And i mean anything. No usb access, no way to create a user account, no way to login with admin access. I have utilitys to create the account or reset a password, but in a guest account you do not get cd or usb access. So i was stuck.
So I find no help from sony or anyone else on my issue. So i figured I'd get a new cd rom for it (which was a peach to install btw. I had to basically pull the board out and remove 1832 screws from a aluminum harness that i have never seen before. Back to my idea. I will boot from an xp cd, format, install, be on my way.
My keyboard issue came back into play to get into bios to change boot sequence. After several hours again of attempting, my good friend, idiot, gets into bios and decides he to boot from the network. idiot. so now i have a laptop with no keyboard trying to boot from the network with no way to stop it. (side note: disable sony animated junk logo on boot, the sound will drive you mad.)
I ended up getting the bright idea to pull the cmos battery to hopefully flash the bios. I took apart the vgn-fs810 and could not find the battery, so i disconnected everything I c ould find, let it sit over night and re-assembled in the am. It worked, great. I got into bios set the cd-rom to boot first, and bam xp setup starts loading. whew. so i go to get some coffee. I come back and the vaio is silent, with no display. Did the battery die? silly me. I plug it in and run the setup again. this time im glaring at it. watching all the drivers, etc. copy, and it says bottom left starting windows, ERROR SOMTHING BAM. off. wtf. so i run it again, and again and again, getting one char at a time. Its failing on keyboard layout something or other. So after some serious trouble shooting i pull the keyboard out, thinking the missing key is somehow the culpret. so i run the setup again with usb keyboards (3) and it goes to the screen to setup xp, repair, exit. I choose setup. So excited. BAM. Windows could not detect any hard disks.
I'm running out of energy right now talking about this vaio, so im going to cut this part down. Its an ide drive. I tried 3 other hard drives. 1 a used drive from my sony, 2 a new drive, 3 an identical make and model drive, boots no os found, it will not boot to cd with any other hard drive installed and no keyboard will work. the only way to get into windows setup is the drive that came with the machine and xp setup does not see it.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!
If you are short on time and need the nitty gritty here it is, if you have time or need more details, please read:
NITTY:
XP install on vaio, xp will not see hard drive no matter what hard drive is installed.
XP setup fails frequently for keyboard layout error.
END NITTY
I have a user that brought this laptop to me because it was littered with spyware. I reccomended a wipe and reload. I backup the data to an external and after some investigating i realized;
Bad CRROM drive. Not a big deal, sony has a sweet built in recovery dohickey. After countless hours of trying to boot into this recovery system (keyboard does not work very well outside of windows.) I finally get in (3 usb keyboards hooked up as well). Run the recovery, windows boots, yay, but no.
Logs me in with a guest account. Can't do anything. And i mean anything. No usb access, no way to create a user account, no way to login with admin access. I have utilitys to create the account or reset a password, but in a guest account you do not get cd or usb access. So i was stuck.
So I find no help from sony or anyone else on my issue. So i figured I'd get a new cd rom for it (which was a peach to install btw. I had to basically pull the board out and remove 1832 screws from a aluminum harness that i have never seen before. Back to my idea. I will boot from an xp cd, format, install, be on my way.
My keyboard issue came back into play to get into bios to change boot sequence. After several hours again of attempting, my good friend, idiot, gets into bios and decides he to boot from the network. idiot. so now i have a laptop with no keyboard trying to boot from the network with no way to stop it. (side note: disable sony animated junk logo on boot, the sound will drive you mad.)
I ended up getting the bright idea to pull the cmos battery to hopefully flash the bios. I took apart the vgn-fs810 and could not find the battery, so i disconnected everything I c ould find, let it sit over night and re-assembled in the am. It worked, great. I got into bios set the cd-rom to boot first, and bam xp setup starts loading. whew. so i go to get some coffee. I come back and the vaio is silent, with no display. Did the battery die? silly me. I plug it in and run the setup again. this time im glaring at it. watching all the drivers, etc. copy, and it says bottom left starting windows, ERROR SOMTHING BAM. off. wtf. so i run it again, and again and again, getting one char at a time. Its failing on keyboard layout something or other. So after some serious trouble shooting i pull the keyboard out, thinking the missing key is somehow the culpret. so i run the setup again with usb keyboards (3) and it goes to the screen to setup xp, repair, exit. I choose setup. So excited. BAM. Windows could not detect any hard disks.
I'm running out of energy right now talking about this vaio, so im going to cut this part down. Its an ide drive. I tried 3 other hard drives. 1 a used drive from my sony, 2 a new drive, 3 an identical make and model drive, boots no os found, it will not boot to cd with any other hard drive installed and no keyboard will work. the only way to get into windows setup is the drive that came with the machine and xp setup does not see it.
PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!
