I bought a really nice Vaio desktop computer last month at Worst Buy in Easy Palo Alto. My friend broke it the other day and I’m getting a screen that demands I put in the original windows cds to fix it. Problem is that Sony no longer ships the original cds.
Worst Buy says I can drop it off at their store, pay them $167 and they’ll reformat the hard drive for me with the original software and settings. That isn’t appealing to me for a number of reasons.
If anyone near Atherton, CA wants to come by and fix this for me, I’ll pay $100 cash. It has to be tonight, and you have to bring everything you need to fix it. If not tonight, I’ll be back around Dec 30 and could do it then.
If you want me to, I’ll also put a very nice link up to your blog/site thanking you.
Michael,
Check in My Computer and see if you have a folder named I386 on the C:\ Drive. If you do, chances are that most of the windows files that you’ll need are there. Just point the screen to that file and it should pick up the files it needs. Unless they are in a subdirectory if I386 which means of course that you’ll have to find them first and point it to the appropriate folder.
good luck.
I’m in North Dakota or I’d come over.
As Shane already wrote it, there might be a good chance the files are still on the harddrive.
If there’s no i386 directory on the PC, try to find the file (by using F3 under the explorer) for which Windows is asking the CD. Sometimes it’s already under c:\windows\system32 but windows can’t find it by itself.
Good luck…
so all I can get the computer to do is show this screen. There is no opportunity to check out the hard drive directly in any way that I can see.
I already emailed you but for anyone else reading – I had this problem. Sony keeps the information so if your hard drive is still ok you can go into BIOS and reload configuration defaults which will reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows and the bundled Sony software that came with.
Usually when I have this kind of error and Windows is asking for a CD I do just press OK without any CD in the drive.
When Windows do realize that he can’t find any files it will show a prompt where you enter another location.
It’s here that you can enter c:\i386 or c:\windows\system32 or any directory where you believe the file required file may already be.
At least it’s how my Ibm is reacting… If it’s not working, I’m sorry I’m just as lost as you.
What Franck said, but you’re looking for c:\windows\i386. If it’s a driver update, often you can just cancel the update and it will use the existing driver.
thanks everyone.
I am sorry to say that my opinion about you just dropped 80%.. look who’s been teaching me the latest about Web 2.0… a guy who can’t reinstall his OS.
I am VERY disappointed!
Internet technologies such as are Michaels expertise are quite a bit different from reinstalling a funky OS without discs.
Did you get it to work Michael?
Hey! I resent that remark. I can re-install an os. What I’m trying to do is (1) get someone else to do it for me, adn (2) save the contents of the hard drive.
well, if you really need to save the contents of the drive, you can throw a Linux live cd in and ip them around. Or you can simply move the drive to another machine(I’m assuming you have one) and just burn a cd(s) of the contents or move the pertinent contents to another hard drive for the time being while you reinstall the OS.
Shane, cool. Will you come over and do this for me please?
Michael,
Is there a hidden recovery partition on the Hard Disk that contains the files.
Any change of just booting in safe mode (press F8 at boot up) and running System Restore (Programs/Accessories/System Tools) to roll XP back to a point in time before your buddy dork it up?
Why don’t you ask your friend who messed the computer up pay the $167 to reformat the drive? Just a thought….
Mike:
You need to remind Worst Buy that when you paid for the computer, you were also paying for licenses to software on that computer. If you go into a store and press them, they will burn the necessary CDs for you at no cost. I know; I had to have them do this for me. They tried to charge me for it, but I refused to pay — and made the store manager back me up.
Once I had the CDs, the re-install was a piece of cake.