I learned alot yesterday, when re-installing Windows on the laptop.

My recovery cd’s are three. #2 decided it wouldn’t work (cyclic redundancy, lots of scratches that came from WHERE?) I used these very discs in the Summer of 2003 for the first time. They were in there packages since then. That’s the way it goes.

So did it make sense to scrounge for $29 plus change, and have SONY send me a new set of Recovery CD’s?

I decided, “No.”

We have a Win XP Home OEM CD. I installed that, and figured somehow in the next 30-days I would have to figure out how to keep it on the laptop (activate it).

Then I went through a million hoops trying to get SONY drivers to install.

I think that most of them worked best to install via Device Manager: Update Driver, and having it search the designated folder on the Sony driver CD.

I was on Vaio Village, an Easy board, posting under a relevant, to me, thread asking for help. I wanted the apps from the recovery CD’s, like WIN DVD mostly …

This is the place to go: http://www.myplc.com/sony/sony_apps.htm

Command line solution to unpacking the SONY.PAC on each Application Recovery CD. Once they are unpacked, on your harddrive, you can install them at will, with no arguement of “This ain’t a SONY INSTALLATION! Can’t do it!” sort of messages.

So, if you know me, that didn’t satisfy me. I wanted this install of WIN XP to be valid, to hang around (but not hang!) if it could. So I didn’t let go, and tackled that next.

Read, read, read all over the ‘net.

Finally the realization hit me, I DO have a valid key for this SONY PCG-GRV550 laptop. Sony puts a WIN XP sticker on the bottom of the machine. Bless them!

So, can I save this installation? Yes, I could, can, and did.

Bring up the activation dialog and there’s a button to “generate a new key”.

Read about it here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3BQ328874

The above directions will get you going if you just want to change the key your computer will activate with. If you’ve activated already, you can see how to un-activate first.

Future Installs for me will be a breeze. Hope this helps someone else!

Today I am going to be re-installing the OS on my laptop (SONY Vaio PCG-GRV550). It’s been in place for many months, close to a year , in fact, nearly just that. I forgot, but searching my archives I recalled that I last reinstalled July 18, 2003. That dratted Coke Spill Incident which pushed my lovely computer over the edge to being a laptop that needed the keyboard replaced, and have at least 1 USB port that didn’t work anymore, if not other elements which I just don’t use so don’t know, like the FireWire port. So, it’s been a long time. Some people feel, even with XP, that Windows should be clean installed every year or twice a year. That’s all windows systems. I tend to agree. Don’t try to fix it if it ain’t broke, but then also, if it’s even a tad sluggish, re-do it, you’ll be happier. We’ll see about that with my laptop, considering all.

In any case, I’ve done so much stuff to it and it’s just not working right. I know it needs some things fixed, but besides that, the thing will, most likely, run better once I re-install, clean install that is, the whole OS and such.

As it is, once it boots up and windows xp logs me in, it takes nearly 10 minutes most times for startup stuff to open and start, and if you want to do anything with a program before that all stops, forget it. This is mainly a problem because the laptop turns itself off suddenly whenever it feels like it. It’s one of those things that needs to be fixed, a daughterboard replacement, or something like that. So, this is an issue if it decides to shut off several times a day and I’m using the machine.

I am not using it most of the time. Full time I’m using the desktop the last couple of months. I get my email on desktop, but not filtered. I keep my email coming in the laptop, saved on the server for one day, and on the desktop I just have it saved on the server forever. This way, I get the mail correctly on both machines. It just goes a bit bad if my laptop isn’t turned on and email downloaded for several days. Since I don’t filter the desktop version of my mail, those very generic messages from my ISP slip by unnoticed until I can’t send myself something, or don’t get any mail when I think I should. That only has gone to the extreme once or twice, usually it has only been at a high water mark, the level of emails on the server being nearly full, but not. That’s alot to download at once.

So I’m burning my .pst to a CDRW as I type this, and hope to get the drive wiped and reinstalled cleanly and efficiently. Then re-install of all my stuff again. In an organized manner, I am hoping to do that. I won’t just throw stuff back on the drive, I want to rename and rearrange as would be more fitting. I have a goodly organized computer, just that I have many areas organized that could be fitted together instead of having it all spread out. I sometimes forget that I have such and such a folder setup for this or that kind of download, and recreate something similar someplace else, and then I have two or more folders with like stuff, spread out, instead of all of it in the one main folder. Just one little example.

Last week I had to reinstall Frank’s work laptop OS. Something corrupted and it wasn’t going to work to fix it. HP, which is what that laptop is, provides a separate OS CD from the applications and drivers. Sony, which is my laptop, my model at the least, there are three System Recovery CD’s which it takes forever to install, seemingly, and then two CD with applications on them. Oh, for at least a real Win XP install, but no, it’s a SONY PRE-NO-PRACTICAL-CHOICES-DONE-DEAL-CD. Ah, I am so familiar with installing Win XP. I’ve installed it on the desktop, which I’m typing on now, multiple times. It’s gone bad so many times, so frustrating. Well, that was when hubby was working on it. Since I last installed, he has had the HP laptop for work and play. Hmmm, no reinstall here, but I had to reinstall the HP laptop already. Hmmm.

Frank, any comments?