Cant Installing WIN2K on WIN ME Sony

[triplerush]

i cant seem to install my win2000 on my sony pcv-rx450 Sony VAIO PC /1 gig mhz 128 ram 40gid hdd and i think its sony--the machine as opposed to the software.i have tried literally 20 times and its not working.the only time i managed to see something i checked the ram an dthe machine tells m ei have 116 ram--as soon as i go back windows ME it runs fine(of course it dosent take long for it to spurt-and freeze)--am i doing something wrong?i have tried clean install and upgrading----i upgraded a compaq amd 750 mhz 128 ram and that seems to be running super fine----
if anyone has had similar problems let me know!thanks

[highrisemech]

It could very well be a ram problem.
I tried once before installing Win 2000 on my desktop that was running ME. The setup would just freeze after a certain point. Then I tried a new stick of ram and all went well. It was kind of weird the machine never had a problem while running ME. I think Win 2000 is just a little more picky when it comes to ram. Bottom line try another stick of ram and see it it gets you where you are going. Besisides that fact that your present ram is being reported as 116 meg when it should be reporting 127 meg.

[Pimpmaster]

To tell you the truth, you can't upgrade to 2000 from ME. You'd have to reformat your computer to install it.

[GaryRouth]

Here's a link to Sony Support for your model. There's a series of links that detail how to upgrade to Win2000 on that model. There also happens to be an offer to replace the hard drives that came with the rx450 series - [it's a free replacement] - there seems to have been some overheat issues with the drives.

http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/support/pc/pcvrx450rx460/

Sony has it's own way of doing things, so check out what their site has to say about the hard drive & their upgrade procedures. You will certainly need an entirely new set of drivers for your hardware - they're all downloadable from the Sony webpages linked above. I did notice that they recommend a clean install of Win2000 , so make backups of whatever personal data you wish to keep first.

And regarding the memory issue: can't hurt to test it. DocMemory at http://www.simmtester.com might do the trick. Like highrise mentions, if you've got another stick around, that's a quick try. Of course, you can test that one, too.

Your memory is reporting 116 probably because of shared memory for the SiS chipset "onboard video solution". . .

A word of caution: none of the bundled software is officially supported by Sony for Win2000, nor is the Recovery Disk Set usable after the upgrade (obviously).

You might be just as well-off downloading their driver updates (there are quite a few of them) for the WinMe OS, and seeing if WinME might do after all.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[I'd take them up on that offer for a free hard disk replacement, too, just in case]