• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Sony Vaio PCG-632L restoration help

hunterjwizzard

hunterjwizzard

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2020
Messages
2,212
So I'm attempting to restore this neat little PIII laptop I picked up in a thrift store last year. The original HDD was on its last legs, so I have replaced that with a PATA SSD. I loaded a WinXP image on the SSD that was cloned from a different system.

Annnnd... that won't boot.

So I decided to try and get into the BIOS to see what all I could boot from. There is a freakin password on the BIOS. SO even if by some miracle it can boot to USB, I can't change the boot order.

Technically I do have the doc for this laptop but the doc is broken and I have to learn to solder before I can fix it.

So I'm stumped. Anyone got any suggestions how I can get an operating system onto this thing?
 
That's a PCG-R505DL? For future reference, VAIOs usually have two model numbers - the one printed on the bottom (XXX-numbersnumbersnumbers) and the actual model number that Sony referred to it as (usually printed on a sticker on the display bezel or inside the computer). No one uses the bottom model number (confusing, I know). Since it's 505 series I'm guessing there's no internal CD-ROM drive. Does the SSD you imaged boot in another laptop? Getting an OS onto VAIOs with no CD-ROM drive is always an absolute pain...
 
Yes its a PCG-R505DL. I never even noticed the two separate model numbers.

The SSD "boots" but windows won't load, if that makes sense? I can get to the screen that asks if you want normal boot, safe mode, etc.

I do not have another era-appropriate laptop to install this SSD in. Nor, for that matter, do I have the adapter to attach it as an IDE drive to a desktop. I had an image of XP I believe I took off of a Pentium IV. It was a basic boot with no drivers loaded. Unfortunately this laptop is a Pentium III and Windows does not appear to like that.
 
Oh god, Sony's computers regardless what side of the Year 2000 you are on are an absolute nightmare to get fully working if the drive is missing or they do not have the factory install on them. The recovery media (the genuine stuff! Not the generic driver kits people try and sell) is key. If you don't have it and you cannot source it, while they do install a lot of Sony themes and Sony shovelware there's also a lot of very special drivers and registry tweaks Sony otherwise never released and thus a retail install CD of Windows will work but a lot of things will simply never work.
I had two Sony laptops that took nearly 15 years before the recovery media appeared on the internet archive. I spent weeks previously getting both to work just by piecing drivers and registry hacks together but there was still problems with the display resolution and jogwheel.

There is a freakin password on the BIOS
Click to expand...
That too. I don't know what it was with Sony users but with the OS all polished and tweaked, they simply had to enable the BIOS password even if they never needed it. Then when their laptop broke you got it in for repair, you'd discover this and spend hours or even weeks waiting for them to reply to your request for the password.
I'm trying to remember from when I had to deal with the last of the PIII/P4 Vaio laptops but they used a Phoenix BIOS. Since you mentioned the old drive was weak but still worked, you can probably try one of the older BIOS cracking tools and see if you can get through using that.
 
Last edited:
NeXT said:
Oh god, Sony's computers regardless what side of the Year 2000 you are on are an absolute nightmare to get fully working if the drive is missing or they do not have the factory install on them.
Click to expand...
Well that does actually provide some light at the end of the tunnel. I DO in fact have the original HDD and it DID appear to have a factory install. Its just that its a very old, very tired drive with a very old, very tired windows XP install.

I have a clean image of that drive I can apply to the SSD. Then I just have to deal with all the problems of a very old, very tired Windows XP install.
 
Unfortunately it does not appear hat factory recovery media has its way online yet so you don't have much else for a choice beyond cloning the disk and sanitizing it.
 
NeXT said:
Unfortunately it does not appear hat factory recovery media has its way online yet so you don't have much else for a choice beyond cloning the disk and sanitizing it.
Click to expand...
The install is relatively clean, it looks like the previous owner did replace the original HDD and restore from factory recovery media at some point. Then it looks like it was heavily used for years after that, I think as some kind of music player.

But I will take a chance.

Except it looks like it came with an 80gb drive and my SSD is only 64. Anybody know how to re-size an image file?
 
My best idea so far, and it is not a good one, is to write the image to a working hard drive, resize it, and capture it again. I do not have any working IDE laptop hard drives, so I'm not sure how this XP install is going to handle going through 3 different hard drives.

Fortunately this bad idea is at least all non-destructive.
 
IIRC Acronis TrueImage can clone to smaller drives if there is enough free space on the larger drive. I would try an older version from the XP era (e.g. 9/10/11).
 
I should have Acronis in my collection. I pulled the image using win32 disk imager and I am really leery about trying to hook the old disk up again.

Unfortunately I will have to wait a couple days since I can't hook my XP systems up at this exact moment. That should hopefully be fixed tomorrow.
 
So after spending all morning trying to find a working copy of Acronis, I gave up and tried to use Win32 Disk Imager to write the too big file to the too small drive. It wrote fine and I know there's plenty of room(easily less than 10gb install size on an 80gb disk).

Now it boots all the way to the welcome screen!
 
After much fiddling I finally got the thing to work! It now boots fully and there was no password. It looks like sometime ago the previous owner did a factory restore then installed EverQuest and a bunch of music players.

the XP install might not be as tired and old as I first thought. Turns out while the machine has a 1GHz Pentium III processor its only got 256MB of RAM. Thats why XP appears to be doing a power squat just idling with no services running. I'll have to look into upping the RAM later, I don't think I have 512 sticks of laptop memory.
 
Well it turns out I can get it to load all the way into windows only be disabling all services. Unfortunately there are probably 50 services in there and turning them back on one at a time to find the problem will be a pain.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top