My computer software is all mucked up (user issues I’m sure!), and I had been trying to locate recovery disks for the TR3AP - the aftermarket US supplier wouldn’t ship to my address in Canada so finally I was able to get a kind soul at Sony Canada (God love him) to agree that the local Sony service depot would reinstall the original software for me. (They won’t give me the disks because of the Microsoft licensing issue that has been addressed on the site before).

My question is, does anyone have advice on what to do when I get the “fresh from the box” TR home? Here’s my current plan

- use Acronis True Image to get a ghost of the install so that if it happens again I have the ability to recover
- install XP2 Service Pack
- install security software

Then I’m assuming that I’ll need to install all the updated drivers from the Sony site. Is there any specific order I should do this in to avoid conflicts?

Also, I have a bunch of third party software - do I just install these one by one checking to see if there are any problems? I assume I’ll need to check for updates online for each of these before going forward.

Do I install my data etc last?

I’ve read the partitioning discussions, so I’m intending to put all my software in the C drive and My Documents in D.

I also expect that there is some software that I will want to remove - any suggestions on what Sony installed junk I can take off without messing up my performance?

Sorry for the long message, but I don’t want to mess this process up.

You should definitely make a backup of your system using acronis true image as soon as you get your system back. It really helps…my hdd crashed recently and I restored my harddrive image to the new harddrive in barely 5 minutes (it would have taken 2-3 hours otherwise).

Once you’ve done that you can do your experimentation knowing that if you mess up something, you can simply restore your copy from the acronis image. Get all windows updates, install updated drivers from the sony site (order shouldn’t matter), install your third party softwares.

Regarding the preinstalled sony software, I think the following are important:
HotKey Utility (this would be for the 4 buttons on the lcd and the function buttons on the keyboard)
Network Smart Capture (for the camera)
Sony Utilities Library
Sony Video Shared Library
PowerPanel (very useful util…gives details of battery usage…also can find out the batteries new max charge capacity after a few months of usage)
Smart Capture Library

Some of these might not be important and I might have left out some important utils but the above should be enough. And again, incase something stops functioning you have nothing to worry since you can do the factory restore using the acronis backup.

According to me as I suggested to you, the best thing is doing a clean install and installing only required software but that didn’t seem to work for you.

Good luck!

You may already know this, but you should install SP2, critical software and whatever else before creating the image.

Like I told you guys before in another post…

you dont have to trouble yourself with getting a recovery CD.
You can use just any XP installation CD as long its the rigth version (home, pro).

You can use your product key to install and call microsoft for activation!

(If you have never activated before the computer will tell you that your product ID ist not correct. It will let you talk to a real person and that someone will give you the activation code. Next time you call for activation the computer will give the activation code to you right away.

Reason: Microsoft discontinued support for online activation for some product Keys that have been delivered with laptops)

Drivers can be downloaded from Sony support site!
You can even make your own recovery disc using nLite.
You can also slipstream it so that SP2 is integrated.