Sony Vaio Problem (HD?)

[fringecreations]

Good Morning and Happy bank holiday all

I was hoping to pick a few brains out there.... I have a Sony Vaio (purchased about 2 years ago). I have attached the specs at the bottom of this thread.
A couple of months ago the machine started to go slow and at times unresponsive. As days went on it got worse. I scanned for virus infections with avast and avg with no results, the same for spyware. I did a factory reset and all seemed fine. I continued my normal activities on it (djing, downloading/watching movies and internet browsing). After a couple of weeks it seemed to slow down again. I ran diagnostic tools- the one that sounded alarm bells was the window disk check tool. The laptop would quit windows as expected and run the tool on start up, though it would never get past a certain sector and would freeze. Once again I reset the laptop and all seemed fine- I ran the disk check with no problems. A few days passed and the same happened again which is where I am at now. Safe mode seems to be better but still not fully operational. Programs such as word wont open and I feel that the more I use safe mode, the slower it is getting.

I'm not an expert with computers so am not sure where to go other than get it to a repair shop though I hear mixed reports about the standard of work carried out at some of them. Does anyone on here have any advice?

Many thanks,

Rob


Product ID : VPCEB2X5E
Description : Laptop VPC-EB2X - Configurable
Optical Drive : DVD disc drive
Hard drive : 320 GB Serial ATA (7200 rpm)
Documentation. : English documentation
Wireless LAN : Wireless LAN + Bluetooth®
Documentation : English documentation
Processor : Intel® CoreTM i5-520M, 2.40GHz
Display : 39.4 cm LCD, 1920x1080, webcam
Graphics : ATI MobilityRadeonHD5470 512MB
Finishes : White
Bluetooth : Bluetooth x1
Memory : 6 GB 1066MHz DDR3-SDRAM

 

[Deleted member 293381]

If you haven't done it already the most important thing to do is a backup of all your files.

Reading your post the impression I get is the hard drive is about to fail. It looks like bad sectors on the hard drive are causing problems (at a guess).

I take it you have in your possession all the device drivers and the Windows DVD? If not recommend downloading the drivers from the Sony Vaio website for your laptop model.

Then think about replacing your hard drive (assuming that is the problem).

 

[fringecreations]

Hi Alan- I did have all my stuff backed up but annoyingly my external HD also failed though I recovered a lot of the important stuff with a tool called 'Recuva'.

I don't have a windows dvd- this came pre-installed and is based in the recovery sector of the HD. I've read elsewhere that because of this, even though I have a windows key that if I install a new HD that I will also have to purchase a new edition of windows?

The drivers are all easily accessible on the the sony website.

thanks for the response,
rob

 

[Deleted member 293381]

Wow - to have both your external back-up drive and the main hard drive fail is unusual.

However, does the Sony Vaio website also have a forum where you could ask about restoring Windows onto a replacement hard drive? Or ask Sony?

I say that because some hidden recovery partitions where Windows and drivers are stored on the hard drive have the means (maybe through a menu choice) to burn that useful data onto a bootable DVD disk.

 

[spyder viewer]

Yes very strange that you have two HD's go down: I've never had one in over 20 years of computing!

You might be able to disk image the recovery partition onto another drive. Also, use something like Belarc to recover your security key if you haven't got it written down. MS are quite sympathetic if you get in touch with them if the key doesn't work on a clean installation.

Welcome to AVForums.

 

[fringecreations]

Thank you Spyder- by security key do you means windows product key? If so, its on the back of my laptop.

 

[spyder viewer]

Sorry yes that's right. You may have a problem that it's an OEM key and might give you problems with full W7 disks. Somebody might be able to supply a link to a disk image you can download.