I need to format my drive but....

[Kaoss]

Ok get prepared for the whole story!

I bought a sony vaio pcv rs310 (my first personal comp)
and suspecting that the integrated 64mb intel video card would not
suffice my gaming habits I shopped around and found a 128mb
gforce fx5200 only to realize that there was
no agp slot :~(
So then I got a motherboard.. then that
would not fit into my sony case so
then I bought a case.

Pretty much I built my first computer.

Hence i have no warranty, no customer support, and alas no system recovery.

Now my specs are as follows:

windows xp home edition
pentium4 2.4 ghz
intel motherboard 865perl
1gb ddr ram
80 gb disc drive split into two partitions
C and D with only windows on the C drive
128mb gforce fx 5200
soundblaster audigy ls 24-bit

OK now on with the questions>>

1.how can I reformat my hard drive without deleting my windows
You know just like the recovery. When I try and use my boot discs
it says that sony recovery will not recover this computer because
it is not a sony computer.

What happened is that some game I bought put spyware
on my computer and and so I went into msconfig and did the
diagnostic startup deal. when my comp restarted all the
windows were like windows 95 or something and now it won't let
me copy files to cds plus I have no sound no matter
how many times I reinstall my drivers. under my
display>settings>advanced> hardware the box is empty??
Like nothings installed?
I'm really confused cause this has never happened!


I really do appreciate any help that you guys can give me and please.
if you feel that you can not give a serious and helpful reply
please leave the posts to those that have had
more experience with windows xp and all the
baggage that comes along with it.



Thanks alot.

[MulderMan]

you can boot up your computer with your xp cd and format and reinstall windows (providing it is a real disk - not a sony recovery disk), but you will loose all your files. first you should try to get rid of the spyware though, i recomend adaware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and spybot http://security.kolla.de/

[glc]

Let's try to fix what you have, because the only way you are going to reload (or even repair) Windows is by buying a real copy of XP. As you have found, the Sony restore discs will no longer work.

Try using spyware removal tools - CWShredder, Spybot Search & Destroy, Ad-Aware. Make sure you have no viruses. Post a HijackThis log when you are done.

You may have to do a system restore back to a date before you installed this whatever it is.

You may wind up having to buy a copy of XP anyway - be prepared for this possibility. All that preinstalled Sony stuff is not helping you anyway.

Not trying to chew on you, but you have now found out why buying a proprietary machine with all onboard components is not a wise purchase if you have any intention of upgrading anything.

[Kaoss]

Agreed!! LMAO

first of all let me say sorry it took
so long to reply>>comp was DOWN!!

first of all like I said this was my first comp.

Second of all I have all the suggested free and even better anti-virus and spyware removers so thanks for the suggestions!
Avg>> www.grisoft.com >>spy-bot>>adaware6

And thirdly: When I first bought this comp if I knew what I know now I would have built my own computer!!

Sony inbedded so much crap into the actual windows folders it is rediculous!

As far as I know Dell and Sony are some of the only buttHOLES who pull this kind of crap.

Now when I look in my start ups theres only like 4 things running unlike the 30 that I first had when I bought that peice of poop.

Like I said before I have basically taken that $1200 dollar commercial and deconstructed it and made my own computer.

what I did was shop around and I found some nut who sold me his old crappy computer that already had win xp on it!

Am I lucky or what!


THANKS again guys you were all very helpful and curteous!
My comp is much faster and runs like a gem and as far as vaio goes they can grease up my... nvm

Oh yeah one last thing where can I get a free DVD player or a codec pack for my windows media player 9? It won't play any of my dvd's?

[TheJackal]

If you still have the Windows XP CD key that was on the sticker attached to the side of your computer, you can call Microsoft, and for a small fee they will mail you an XP CD.

[glc]

The best thing you can do is buy PowerDVD and install it - you should be able to find an OEM copy of it for under 10 bucks somewhere. Not only is this an excellent standalone player, it installs the necessary codecs for using WMP9. MWave has it for 3 bucks, you have to buy it with hardware - no minimum requirement on hardware - a 99 cent power supply "Y" cable would qualify.

An administrative note - I feel your frustration, but foul language, actual or masked, is prohibited on these forums. Thank you for your consideration.