How to: Clean Install

[skykit84]

Hi all, as promised, after scores of wasted cds... I finally got my retail XP Pro toaccept the sticker s/n under the laptop:-

Note: I do not believe to be doing anything against the rules. I will assume that everyone here has a legit copy of the licence sticker under their laptop.
On top of this, I will assume that the XP CD is legit but as far as I know, this is not needed as you have a legit licence.
We are editing the CD to ensure it accepts the legit licence.


When I bought my Sony SZ2XP/C, I could not believe how much junk there was pre-installed by Sony. 8 GBs of trial software and unstable Windows files made the laptop useless on Day 1. I’m very specific on how things are setup, from where things install, to what is installed and so on.
Having said all this, I was not surprised to see anything because of previous users complaining about this.

So I thought, what I will do is use my legit copy of Windows XP Pro and install it on the laptop. There was an initial issue with drivers because many on the forums mentioned how difficult it was to get drivers for Sony Laptops. This was not an issue for me because the drivers were all available including the camera and shortcut keys on the website. Failing the website, the drivers were available on the c:\ along with the applications (such as Sony Vaio power management and so on).
I would strongly advise copying this although most will be on the website.

So after installing… I noticed that the serial number under my laptop was invalid. Now, I had just bought this laptop, got it with XP Pro which I assume I paid for during the buying of the laptop. When this did not work, I was rather annoyed. I phoned Sony up and they were not interested. When I used a serial that worked, and then changed to the sticker, it failed. Microsoft too did not want to know.

So that’s my story on how things got started.

After 20-30 copies of XP Pro, I found the way to have a clean install and make it work.

Note:
Microsoft XP Pro Retail, OEM, Corp, and restore CDs will not accept the sticker serial number

1.Find a copy of Windows XP Pro, or OEM
2.Copy the entire contents making sure hidden files or folders are copied to hard-disk. To do this, make a folder called XP in your C:\
3.Once copied, you need several files in your I386 folder from the Sony install. Now these are almost impossible to get if the hard-disk is corrupt, formatted or not accessible. The files are as follows:-


•OEMBIOS.BI_
•OEMBIOS.CA_
•OEMBIOS.DA_
•OEMBIOS.SI_
•OEMCOA.JP_
•OEMIG50.EX_
•OEMIGLIB.DL_
•OEMLOGO.GI_
•PIDGEN.DLL
•SETUPP.INI

4.Copy the above files into your i386 folder in the XP you copied to your HD
5.Now you are ready to burn the files to CD but first, you need to ensure the CD is bootable
6.To make the CD bootable…. Create a new Bootable ISO in Nero
7.Copy all the files and folders in your XP folder into your ISO image in Nero
8.The folders you should have in your image are:-

CMPNENTS
DOCS
I386
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
Autorun.inf
readme.htm
setup.exe
setupxp.htm
win51
win51ip
win51ip.sp2
9.Click on Burn.
10.On the Boot tab, ensure Kind of Emulation is set to None, and number of Loaded Sectors is 4 (or cd will notboot!!)
11.Now we just need a bootable image. This is attached in the files. You can extract the bootable image from your original XP CD using ISOBuster
12.Select Image File and use the Microsoft Windows.IMG in there
13.That’s it… hit burn

Boot of the new CD you just created and once asked for serial, use the serial number from under the laptop. This should successfully accept your serial number and activate.

That’s it from me…. Have fun in your CLEAN windows installed laptop/PC.

I accept no responsibility in this however can say that in several installations, this has worked fine. This will work on other laptops with similar issues such as HP and Dell.



Thats it... I just need to find a place to host these files.. any advice? Its about 13mb for anyone who wants them.

[Notebook64]

vgn-fe21b



thanks

[szilvia]

i hope i'm at the right place with my problem.

i have a vaio tx2, originally with a german windows xp. i wanted to install an english one, so i downloaded the latest drivers and utilities from the support website, then formatted partition c, then installed xp.
after it i installed the drivers and utilities, but almost nothing worked well (control center didnt start, power management didnt worked) so i searched the web, and found this: http://esupport.sony.com/EN/osmig/xpclean.html

this is a very useful page, the second time i followed these instructions, and that way installed the drivers and apps in the RIGHT order.

now the situation is much better, everithing works fine, as just before, except one little thing: the cpu control isnt show up in the vaio power management, only the cpu fan control.
so when i use my vaio from battery, and wanna save energy, i have only one opportunity: to set the cpu fan to level 1. but then when the cpu is in use, the vent should turn on, so the power management decreases the cpu frequency to 240 mhz, which is very low.
In one word, i dont wanna control the fan, i wanna control the performance!
Does someone know, which utility is for this function? i dont want to reinstall all of them, because everithing else works fine, and i dont want to mess things up.

originally a little tray icon showed me that the cpu is in performance, adaptive, or energy saving mode. now its gone also.

hope there's a solution for the problem.

p.s.: when i wrote everything works, i meant everything: the buttons at the side of the laptop, all funtion keys (adjusting brightness, etc..) and the audio. just the cpu control is missing.

(i added this because i saw that others have probs with installing drivers, but if you follow the instructions in the linked site, there should be no problem)

[mi5]

Hi all, Can someone tell me where can I find this files from Windows Home Edition? I dont have recovery DVD, recovery partition.

Files:

• OEMBIOS.BI_
• OEMBIOS.CA_
• OEMBIOS.DA_
• OEMBIOS.SI_
• OEMCOA.JP_
• OEMIG50.EX_
• OEMIGLIB.DL_
• OEMLOGO.GI_
• PIDGEN.DLL
• SETUPP.INI

thanx a lot

[SpySect]

I am able to host the files for you if you require it. You can PM me or email me.

[hazymat]

Purely as a point of interest, as the question was raised (if rhetorically) in the first post.

But no, it is not legal to do this.

I know, because I had the conversation with Microsoft's UK retail licensing department manager

If I could make the case that it was legal/legit, it would have saved my company thousands of pounds - so believe me, I tried.

That's not to say I'm not going to do this to my personal laptop, because I am.

Sony sucks for not providing a Dell-like 'clean' OEM installation disk, and I'm not taking the pain for that. I don't care how legitimate.

[skykit84]

I wonder with your statement , will this get removed now?

But on a serious note, and while we can drag this out and totally ruin the point of a "sticky" I would like to know more about this.

If the Licence is legit, states the product used on the machine and has a legit serial number/barcode/hologram...

Why should it be any more illegal to modify a CD to accept the serial as long as you can activate?

My argument is that Microsoft have stated many times that it is ok to "backup" an original media. I do all the time... I'm never going to have my original £300 operating system out in the open or get scratched... so I use the copied backups.

This is allowed because you legally hold a licence.

In the same way, you legally hold a licence, you can (should) be able to use any media as long as at the end of the day, you can activate.

I am not saying you're wrong but maybe you're looking at it as a corperate user?

I will aim to find out more from the horses mouth later next week once my exams at Uni finish and will update.

[godzillax]

Hi all, as promised, after scores of wasted cds... I finally got my retail XP Pro toaccept the sticker s/n under the laptop:-

Note: I do not believe to be doing anything against the rules.  I will assume that everyone here has a legit copy of the licence sticker under their laptop.
On top of this, I will assume that the XP CD is legit but as far as I know, this is not needed as you have a legit licence.
We are editing the CD to ensure it accepts the legit licence.


When I bought my Sony SZ2XP/C, I could not believe how much junk there was pre-installed by Sony.  8 GBs of trial software and unstable Windows files made the laptop useless on Day 1.  I’m very specific on how things are setup, from where things install, to what is installed and so on.
Having said all this, I was not surprised to see anything because of previous users complaining about this.

So I thought, what I will do is use my legit copy of Windows XP Pro and install it on the laptop.  There was an initial issue with drivers because many on the forums mentioned how difficult it was to get drivers for Sony Laptops.  This was not an issue for me because the drivers were all available including the camera and shortcut keys on the website.  Failing the website, the drivers were available on the c:\ along with the applications (such as Sony Vaio power management and so on).
I would strongly advise copying this although most will be on the website.

So after installing… I noticed that the serial number under my laptop was invalid.  Now, I had just bought this laptop, got it with XP Pro which I assume I paid for during the buying of the laptop.  When this did not work, I was rather annoyed.  I phoned Sony up and they were not interested.  When I used a serial that worked, and then changed to the sticker, it failed.  Microsoft too did not want to know.

So that’s my story on how things got started.

After 20-30 copies of XP Pro, I found the way to have a clean install and make it work.

Note:
Microsoft XP Pro Retail, OEM, Corp, and restore CDs will not accept the sticker serial number

1.Find a copy of Windows XP Pro, or OEM
2.Copy the entire contents making sure hidden files or folders are copied to hard-disk.  To do this, make a folder called XP in your C:\
3.Once copied, you need several files in your I386 folder from the Sony install.  Now these are almost impossible to get if the hard-disk is corrupt, formatted or not accessible.  The files are as follows:-


•OEMBIOS.BI_
•OEMBIOS.CA_
•OEMBIOS.DA_
•OEMBIOS.SI_
•OEMCOA.JP_
•OEMIG50.EX_
•OEMIGLIB.DL_
•OEMLOGO.GI_
•PIDGEN.DLL
•SETUPP.INI

4.Copy the above files into your i386 folder in the XP you copied to your HD
5.Now you are ready to burn the files to CD but first, you need to ensure the CD is bootable
6.To make the CD bootable…. Create a new Bootable ISO in Nero
7.Copy all the files and folders in your XP folder into your ISO image in Nero
8.The folders you should have in your image are:-

CMPNENTS
DOCS
I386
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
Autorun.inf
readme.htm
setup.exe
setupxp.htm
win51
win51ip
win51ip.sp2
9.Click on Burn. 
10.On the Boot tab, ensure Kind of Emulation is set to None, and number of Loaded Sectors is 4 (or cd will notboot!!)
11.Now we just need a bootable image.  This is attached in the files.  You can extract the bootable image from your original XP CD using ISOBuster
12.Select Image File and use the Microsoft Windows.IMG in there
13.That’s it… hit burn

Boot of the new CD you just created and once asked for serial, use the serial number from under the laptop. This should successfully accept your serial number and activate.

That’s it from me…. Have fun in your CLEAN windows installed laptop/PC.

I accept no responsibility in this however can say that in several installations, this has worked fine.  This will work on other laptops with similar issues such as HP and Dell.



Thats it... I just need to find a place to host these files.. any advice?  Its about 13mb for anyone who wants them.

Everything you wrote down here is very helpfull,but there is one more way to do it,and also much easyer.Search on google "DOWNLOAD ENLITE" install it.It's very easy to use,and you can aslo make a bootable iso with this program.You must give him the path were you have the folder with windows installation kit(NOT ISO!!!)the folder must contain

CMPNENTS
DOCS
I386
SUPPORT
VALUEADD
Autorun.inf
readme.htm
setup.exe
setupxp.htm
win51
win51ip
win51ip.sp2

after this you select "DRIVER" and "BOOTABLE ISO" and then you click insert and you insert "single drivers" then you choose the SATA and RAID drivers from you Sony drivers.
TRY IT ,THIS IS THE MOAST SIMPLE PROGRAM I EVER USED.

HOPE THIS WAS VERY HELPFULL FOR Y'ALL

[fldq]

With newer Vaio laptops that come preinstalled with Microsoft Windows Vista this matter seems to be much easier..! Sony also ships a Windows Anytime Upgrade Disk (if you want to upgrade your home premium to the ultimate for example) but this DVD acutally is the same DVD as any Microsoft Windows vista retail of oem DVD.

Just use this DVD to clean install and use your own Sony Vaio serial to activate.. Simple - is it not?

[aydin_voghufi]

thanks for useful info

[napsnap]

With newer Vaio laptops that come preinstalled with Microsoft Windows Vista this matter seems to be much easier..! Sony also ships a Windows Anytime Upgrade Disk (if you want to upgrade your home premium to the ultimate for example) but this DVD acutally is the same DVD as any Microsoft Windows vista retail of oem DVD.

Just use this DVD to clean install and use your own Sony Vaio serial to activate.. Simple - is it not?

Hi I've bought my FE41S 3 months ago, but I totally forgotten to backup my vista.
Know I want to clean install my vista, but I dont know how... 😞

I do have a backup of the sony drivers

Or is there a directory with pre-installed vista? And how can I backup the pre-installed programms on my vaio?

I hope you guys can help me out, i'm lost..

THNX