Reformating problems
 

My roommates pc was really messed up so I reformatted it with my "business" XP pro cd. It is a legally owned CD, and I can distribute it (among my family), but I choose to ignore that little notice. I hate using the system restore that comes with Sony's, because it inclues all the ad-ware. The pc runs fine, but when I went to install the video drivers it has problems. I installed them, but it acts like they were never installed. It just says I must restart, and restarts without the drivers. It is a sony, and I downloaded the drivers off the site, but nothing happens. My question is, should I 1) call Sony and see what's wrong. 2) install the sony system restore instead. or 3) basically you have advice to help me out. I have never had this problem with my XP version and I have installed it on other Sony's. So any help you could give me would be great!

did you actually format the computer AND reinstall windows? Or just reinstall windows on top of the old version? I know a lot of people who think "formatting with windows" means just installing windows over the old version again :)

If you did wipe the drive clean, you shouldn't be having this problem. What kind of video does the computer have? Is it onboard, or an AGP card? What type? Nvidia? ATI?

if you really just did a "reinstall in-place" -- did you have service pack 1 and updates/patches installed before you did the reinstall?

if so, did you install those same service packs and updates/patches?

but i'm with redjake - if you're going to reinstall, wipe the drive and fully reinstall.

No I wiped the drive completely. This is probably the 50th time I've done a reformat. And this is the first time I have had problems.

I dont know if this will help, but you may want to find a zero-fill format program from the manufacturer of the drive. Most hard drives in pre-built machines have a partition of restore software that a normal reformat wont kill. I dont know that this would affect your current windows install, but it may be worth a shot.

I highly doubt this is problem. What I recommend is finding the video card that he has on the laptop, and downloading video drivers from the manufacturer of that video card. For example, I have a Geforce4 440 Go on my Dell Insprion 8200, and the Detonator drivers from nvidia actually work better than whatever old drivers Dell offers on their site.

I recommend checking the owner's manual of the laptop, and if that doesn't say, check Sony's site... if all else fails, you could probably open up the laptop and take a look at the label (might be good to bring a compressed air thing along and clean out all the dust that's probably in his computer while you're at it).

It's all good. I gave up and just installed the recovery disk. It took me over an hour to remove all the shit Sony adds into their PC's, but it works. Thanks for your help!