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New Pc Missing Recovery DisksNew Pc Missing Recovery DisksSubjects > Computers > Hardware
Beware of a new scam from PC manufacturers such as Sony . They claim this is being forced on PC manufacturers by Microsoft: Your new desktop PC or laptop might not include any operating system disks. You might be forced to use a set of recovery disks to restore your system, and they can only be used to return your computer to the original operating system. Even worse they may not even give you these recovery disks, they may hide them in a second partition on your hard drive where they are vunerable to viruses and other threats. If you don't immediately make a set of disks using a utility they supply, you might be out of luck and not have disks when you need them.
If you want to change your operating system, you could be out of luck. If you decide you want to put a different operating system on your Sony Vaio PC, or Sony Vaio laptop, you'll find that all the device drivers you'll need are locked inside those recovery disks, and are not accessible to use with other operating systems. Sometimes Sony has the drivers on their website, but often some of the drivers seem to be missing. You might have to be pretty savvy with the internet to find the drivers if they exist, or you might need to pay the neighborhood technician to find them for you.
Regardless of the problems associated with these recovery disks, at least you should be able to wipe your machine clean and bring it back to it's original factory software configuration. New machines don't even include this fallback.
Sony's most recent notebook computers, (this is February 2004, such as the PCG-TR3A), are being shipped without any disks at all! No operating system disks, no device driver disks, no application disks, no recovery disks!!! (They include only an ever present AOL CD!) You'll be forced to make your own recovery disks from a hard drive "recovery partition". This process is extemely error prone and difficult, and it turns out that you will need the patience of Job, (and maybe also the lifespan of Methusaleh), to successfully complete the process. So far in the last 24 hours, I've been through the Vaio Recovery Wizard process 3 times, and have yet to complete one set of disks that I am reasonably sure of. Two times the process aborted with an error after one or more disks were made. Only once did it complete, but it completed the fourth disk of the set suspiciously fast (like in a couple of minutes, compared with 10 minutes or more for all the other disks), and I am not sure if the set is any good.
If the process to create recovery disks works properly, you'll need about two hours to create nine CDs. If there is any error in the process, like when you are making the 5th disk, you'll need to start over and make all the disks from the start. There is no way to continue on after the mistake. It's difficult to imagine how they could have made the process any more difficult, time consuming, frustrating, error-prone, and unlikely to succeed.
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