Vista Recovery Discs

[gasamue]

Last year I installed Windows 7 on my Vaio which had Vista preinstalled. Vaio has not worked properly since then. I have persevered with it by downloading the drivers and firmware from the Sony site but the laptop has not worked as well as it did when it was on Vista. My main bug has been the web cam.

When I installed Win7 it deleted the recovery partition so I can't restore it back from that. Neither is the windows 'old' folder there. And of course I cannot find the recovery discs that I made.

I want to restore back to vista but want to know if after the restore evrything will be back working how it was when I purchased it.

Thanks in advance.

[Blencogo]

Hi gasamue and welcome.

If you tell us which Vaio model you have, someone may be able to help with the webcam.

I doubt if your Vaio will actually work better with Vista - I don't think much does - but I suspect you do not have all the required drivers for Windows 7 installed.  Your Vaio is only going to work better with Vista if you can reinstall the original Operating System which will include all the preinstalled software, drivers and utilities.  I doubt that installing a clean version of Vista will help you.

First recheck that the Recovery Partition has been deleted - this normally does not happen when installing Windows 7 unless you physically format the hard drive: -

Start -> Right-click (My) Computer -> Manage -> Disc Management

What partitions are shown?

Also, go to Device Manager and see if any drivers have yellow ! warnings that the drivers are not successfully installed.

If I were you, I would try to get Windows 7 working properly.  If this fails to work then you can but a relacement set of Recovery Discs from Vaio Support.

[gasamue]

Hi there and thanks for the reply.

It's a NS20E/S. I've checked the disc management and the only disc is the C: Drive. No other partitions.

I've downloaded various drivers from the this site and have looked at different forums with people having the same problem with the webcam.

All the other drivers seem to have installed okay but I just can't seem to get the webcam to work with Windows 7.

I think that reinstalling the original operating software will be the way to go.

[gasamue]

Hi there

Sorry I've not been on but we've been away.

I've had another look and there are 2 partitions but the one that should be the recovery partition is empty as it's showing that it has a capacity of 9.58 GB and has 9.58Gb free space.

As for the device manager there are no yellow warnings. I've contacted sony and they want £48 for the new discs.

I'll take your advice and try to get the webcam working before going for the Vista discs.

I downloaded a driver from Ricoh. (6..209G) but no joy. Lots of people on forums have had the same issue but I've not seen a solution and Sony do not seem to have an answer.

If anyone has a fix for this it would be much appreciated.

I ofrgot to mention that the AV mode button does not work either

[gasamue]

Hello again. I've managed to access the recovery section and the laptop is now running Vista. I have installed all the available updates via the Vaio update utility but the only thing still not working is the Motion Eye webcam.

I've looked at the device manager and it does not show up under imaging devices.

When I run arcsoft web companion which comes bundled with the laptop it says that there is no camera available or conected.

Looked at all the forums and on google but have not seen a solution. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance