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.

[robpaxton]

OK, the forum has gone potty but lets try this again. There is a procedure for doing a clean install at the US Sony support site

It details the order drivers should be installed, gives details of what utilities are need. It also shows dependencies for the utilities and applications. The procedure uses a retail XP pro or home disk.

[Sebby]

Just one question. Are the OEM* files (and the couple of others) only available from the Sony recovery DVD? I can't seem to find them on there in the I386 folder.

[skykit84]

Correct,
Those files are on selected CDs. The ones on HP, Dell and Sony discs worked fine in accepting the serial number on the sticker.

I'm still after a place to upload the files but i've had no help on that so I lost interest. If you need these files, do let me know although they are around 11mb in total from what I remember.

Also please remember( (something I forgot to state) that the original CD you are using needs to be Service Pack 2 for my files to work. The reason being is that my files are from a Service Pack 2 Sony restore CD... and they seem to mess up activation of Windows if you use SP1.

[Sebby]

I've got a couple of problems. Firstly, I don't seem to have those files on in the I386 directory on my Sony CD. I've also realised that my VAIO came with a license for XP Home, and my retail edition is Professional. Never mind!

[philfree]

Correct,
Those files are on selected CDs.  The ones on HP, Dell and Sony discs worked fine in accepting the serial number on the sticker.

CD?? The procedure works without any CD other than access to one original retail CD. It is just a matter of replacing the files extracted from one original retail CD by same files found in C:\Window\i386. You do not need a restore CD or anything else.
Just make sure that the retail CD is same version as the pre-installed OS : XP PRO SP2 -> XP PRO SP2, XP HOME SP1 -> XP HOME SP1 etc..

The only thing is that I believe you missed one file: DPCDLL.DL_ unless it's only required to change localized version (did not work without it on mine).

Using all files you referenced and DPCDLL.DL_ I successfully created an install disk to replace my french Sony OEM WinXP SP2 with a clean install of it's US equivalent. Everything installed nicely using laptop sticker licence, activation accepted as well.

Thanks for the inputs, not sure MS likes it but as was said before, we bought an OEM licence and we created an OEM CD to install it, I fail to see any problem with that.

[iamgod]

excuse the intrusion, but i could not find another place where to ask for it. i recently bought from someone a vaio vgn-n11s/w. unfortunately even though it's brand new, the guy managed to erase all the partitions, including the recovery one. that is why, i cannot use this tool to get back the Windows MCE. I have tried to install another xp pro version, but it seems there are a lot of problems getting in my way. any solution for me to install MCE and all the original software of my vaio?

[robpaxton]

The simplest solution is to contact Vaio-Link and buy a recovery disk.

[lkar]

And what if the retailer didn't give you a coupon and says that sony will do the job for you?

[neurolog]

I forgot to say
You can then use the drivers and so on that you backed up or downloaded.
Also the applications directory has all the Sony stuff that I count as Utilities.
These are not the trial crap but the utils such as Power management, Vaio update (which does not work after the clean install because I'm guessing it looks for a dll to identify the machine?)You then have the HD protection system, hardware diagnostics... vaio control centre etc
all works...just the vaio update does not... I'm not bothered, If i want to look for updated drivers, I normally look individually anyway.

Enjoy.

[Notebook64]

I had the same problem with the trial ware..
I add and removed everything to find that when i placed a cd in my drive, up would pop the list of open with, with half of the options greyed out or some text with words missing....
contacted sony as i wanted to do a fresh install without all the rubbish.
In the end i used another cd to load windows, had problems loading the drivers though... especially to get the sound to work.
I would rather pay an extra few quid and get athe option of a clean install.

can someone help me with installing the drivers in a better fashion.  i loaded all the drivers i could by downloding them off the website and also i had backed them up from my c\drivers directory, and put them on a cd.
After the windows install I then went through device manager and looked for any exclamation marks and said specific location seach cd.

however i havent got everything working such as the function keys eg brightness etc.

also I do miss click to dvd
is there any way of reinstalling this off my recovery cds?
I cannot find the correct files to do this

hope someone can help


What laptop do you have?  For the sz series, the application folder had all the utilities such as those for your Fn keys
If you let us know your model number, I'll try and hunt it down for you