Deleted Recovery Partition?????

[emmal]

Hi Everybody,

Im a newbie here, despite having had my vaio for a year or so now.

Anyway for the last few months I have had a few problems, namely that I couldnt download the vaio update 3. I have contacted Sony and they said what to do but when I tried it told me that my recovery partition has been deleted.

Now this is a complete surprise as I have never touched it, I wouldnt even know where to find it. Has anybody any suggestions as to what I can do (I never got round to doing any recovery disks, and yes I have learnt my lesson [:">] ).

Thanks
Emma

[jumpsuit]

Hi there and welcome to the forum!

I think firstly we have to check that the recovery partition has actually been deleted.
I assume you are running XP

You can try going to control panel - administrative Tools - Computer Management - then under Storage - disk management. Under disk 0 if there is a recovery partition present it will show up at the start of disk 0 with no drive leter allocated. (Possibly as an EISA configuration) It should be about 7.5 Gig - 12 Gig depending on your model.

If it is showing up there reboot the PC and tap F2. Restore your bios to defaults. Save and exit. On reboot tap F10 and this will hopefully take you to the HDDR utility.

If none of the above work its possible that you have removed it by mistake, or a 3rd party application may have done so. If this is the case there is no way that I know of to restore it.
If you created the recovery discs though these will function in the same was as the recovery partition. I would suggest you also make a further 2 copies of these discs.

If you haven't made the recovery discs though then you will have to contact Vaio-Link and order some for your model. This is around 70 Euros.

[emmal]

Hi,

Thanks for replying.

Before I do what you said do I need to make copies of any files etc I want to keep that are already on my C drive. I ask as I run a small business from home and I have several sage clients information on this drive.

Also I do have a blank presumbably recovery partition that appears when I go to the disk management. Also once I have done what you suggested will I then be able to make the recovery disks.

Thanks and sorry for all the questions.
Emma

[MattWilson]

I would back everything up as when the recovery process starts it wipes the drive clean.

[jumpsuit]

Hi there

When you say blank I assume you mean that it has no drive letter assigned. Does it give you the size of it?

Have you tried creating the recovery discs now using the vaio recovery tool?

If you do perform a recovery yes I would advise that you back up any imporatnat data first. During the recovery process you can choose to recover the C drive only if you have a c and d drive. You can back up the data or copy it to the d drive but I would suggest that you make external backups of all the important data to either external hard drives or removeable media.

If you let us know your model number we can point youin the right direction for the recovery tutorial

[Blencogo]

Hi Emma,

Just as a matter of interest, do you have Norton GoBack installed - this can cause the problem you describe.

[emmal]

Hi,

Yes I do have Norton Go Back.

Emma

[emmal]

Hi,

Yes there is no drive letter asigned to it, and its size is 6.99GB with 100% free.

I have been out this evenig so have yet to back up my C & D drive before I do what you suggested.

Thanks
Emma

[Blencogo]

Hi Emma,

Yes I do have Norton Go Back.

You will have to uninstall Norton GoBack for the Recovery Partition to be recognised. You can then make your Recovery Discs or Recover Your Vaio.

The Recovery Partition EISA set-up is incompatible with Norton Go Back and gives you the (wrong) message that the Recovery Partition has been deleted. It will show up normally if you uninstall Norton GoBack.

You can always put it back afterwards!

[emmal]

Hi,

Thanks for your message.

I disbaled my Goback and my computer now realises the recovery partition is there.

So I went off quite happily to start my backup disks, but the computer does not recognise that I have a blank disk in. It keeps tellin me to insert one.

Why are things never straight forward?.

Thanks
Emma