Format Vaio

[mbaldw]

Hi,

We have an old (3 years) Sony Vaio that is starting to play up (BSOD, primarily).   We've checked the HDD and memory and they seem fine, so I'm thinking it may be the O/S.   However, rather than doing a Factory Restore, we were thinking of just formatting the drive and installing a fresh copy of XP.   Aside from hopefully fixing the BSODs, this confers three major benefits to us:

1. Removes all the junk files (esp. games) that have built up and only been partially removed by "Add/Remove Programs".
2. Allows us to claim back the 10 gig that is currently "hidden" on the restore partition.
3. Prevents the system restore putting back on Norton and a host of other stuff that we only have to try and remove again.

So, my question is whether anyone knows of a good reason why Vaio's would be any more difficult to format than any standard PC?   I know that the BIOS/POST isn't displayed on start-up (we just get the blue Vaio screen), but we can enter the BIOS by hitting ESC.

I've Googled various strings that I can think relate to this topic and nobody seems to have run into any major issues, but I figured it couldn't help to ask you folks too.   Any info would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Marc.

[Bill]

Just be sure you have any required drivers that might not be on XP.  I don't know about Sony but my old Dell notebook has lots of special "notebook only" little systems.

Bill

[mbaldw]

Thanks Bill, you make a valid point.   The only consistent problem that my ââ?¬Å?googlingââ?¬Â unearthed was with people who struggled to find video drivers after the format.   Fortunately, the Sony Vaio website contains two large (30mb) ZIP files containing all the drivers and apps that came pre-installed with this model.   I've downloaded some of the latest drivers from the hardware manufacturer's websites and made a detailed note of the hardware.

Cheers
Marc.