I have a SONY Vaio model PCG-TR2AP3.  My question is did you get a Windows XP Professional CD with the package.  I just want to know because I didn’t get one with my package.  Thank you for your assistance.

I think Sony would not ship any Windows XP CDs with their systems.
Recovery system is on hidden partition called Recovery Partition.
There is an apps called Vaio Recovery Wizard to let you make DVD or CD of Recovery system.

or you could order one.

[quote author=“invisiblefly”]or you could order one.

Yes, but not from Sony. Sony will send you the recovery CDs or DVD but not an actual copy of Windows XP on CD.

Sony is cheap, they wont provide you with the windows xp cd. Surprisingly, when I ordered my desktop from dell they had included a separate copy of windows xp home.

my cousin bought HP desktop, they did not provide the cd/dvd neither. only cds for applicaiotns like mswork,etc. :?

Sony Notebook-No Windows XP CD
Gateway Notebook-No Windows XP CD

Fortunately I had an XP disc and could redo the install from scratch once I made sure I had the drivers.

I had trouble with one of the Gateway drivers and when I called support (ha!) the guy was shocked that I would want to do a fresh install.

He told me I had done the install incorrectly and that was why the driver wouldn’t work.  He insisted the only way to reinstall Windows was to use the recovery CD’s that I had burned.

I ended up tracking the driver down on the recovery discs I made before reformatting the drive.

They lock the 4GB partition that the recovery stuff is on so it can’t be deleted from Windows.  I couldn’t get rid of the partition until I was doing my XP install.

What a wierd setup.  Why can’t they provide the recovery disc with the computer instead of a) making you create your own once you have the computer and b) burning up 4-5GB of hard drive space with somehthing you may never need?

One of the benefits of recovery partitions is you can never lose it.  If your computer is so screwed that you cant get into the partition from bootup, then chances are you won’t have much luck with a CD anyways.

Not true.  Your hard drive is one of the most likely items in your laptop to fail.  I read about it here all the time.  If your hard drive fails your recovery partition is gone too.  If you have a recovery disc you can put it in a safe place and after installing a new hard drive you can recover from the CD/DVD.

Besides, on a 40GB drive 5GB is too high a percentage of space to waste on “just in case”.  I keep a copy of my recovery disc (not the sony one) in my bag “just in case”.  My hard drive stores more useful data than a recovery partition.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but Sony provides a recovery DVD (or CD?) set with the X505, a machine which does not include even an optical drive in it’s default config !  :?

I don’t know if you’re aware, but Sony provides a recovery DVD (or CD?) set with the X505, a machine which does not include even an optical drive in it’s default config !  :?

so..? the optical drive that is optional is the thing that x505 must buy extra?  :?

or other brand drives would work with x505 as well

Thats my point.  If your hard drive is fubar, it won’t matter whether you have a recovery partition or a recovery disk.  Neither is going to help.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but Sony provides a recovery DVD (or CD?) set with the X505, a machine which does not include even an optical drive in it’s default config !  :?

so..? the optical drive that is optional is the thing that x505 must buy extra?  :?

or other brand drives would work with x505 as well

:?  :?  Sorry I don’t understand what you mean.

But here’s my point: All TR’s have a optical drive, so it would make sense to provide a recovery cd/dvd set with it rather than provide one with the X505 which by default does not include an optical drive. This clearly means Sony is eerie.

What’s wrong with you people!?! It’s Sony we’re talking about here…stop trying to use common sense and logic to figure them out! 

sorry :oops:  :oops:

[quote author=“jashsu”]
Thats my point.  If your hard drive is fubar, it won’t matter whether you have a recovery partition or a recovery disk.  Neither is going to help.

I must be missing something here:

With a recovery CD/DVD:
1) Hard drive goes bad
2) Buy new hard drive
3) Install new hard drive
4) Recover from CD/DVD that was safely tucked away

Without recovery CD/DVD:
1) Hard drive goes bad
2) Buy new hard drive
3) Install new hard drive
4) Fresh install of OS if you have a disc, then hunt and scrape for drivers, good luck getting any of the software that was on the machine originally, etc.