I am trying to restore my sony vaio pcv-rx470ds back to its original ME OS..I had XP on but now when I try and use the system recovery disk it formats drive c then restarts but then it says it cannot recogonize drive d and wants to format both drives again and restore the partition and I accept that but then it seems to freeze or just stop thinking...I left it for about 1 1/2 hrs in this state hoping to come back amd find it past this point but I was wrong..Any ideas?

Message i just got..

Warningrive D not found

Drive D is not accessible
Some software apps may not work properly when D is not accessible

Type Y to Delete all partitions and create C & D drives

Type N to continue the restore process withoiut creating a D Drive

So I select N and it seems to continue on its merry way until about 8-9% then it say to remove any discs, process is terminated.

Any Ideas?

Hya Clinger, welcome to PCHF.

Is the D drive formatted in NTFS or Fat32?

Try formatting the drive in Fat32 first with a bootdisk, and then try to use the recovery:

KRC Format Guide


BTW, why would you want to go back to ME from XP?

Ok I have gone as far as deleting the partitions by using the xp upgrade and trying to renistall the upgrade and i thought that i had it fixed it even went as far as 100% on formatting then i got a message at the end if it saying that it was unable to continue because it the disk was corrupt or something was not attached....and i was just tryin to wipe the system clean i wasn't going back to ME for good I was just using the system recovery disks to start over again...but I thought I would short cut it by just using the XP disk.

You could try a low level format with an app like this:

Active@ Kill Disk. Hard Drives Eraser. Free Download.

And then try the recovery again, but if it still doesn't work after that then there might be a prob with the HD itself.

Well i guess im out of luck here....any suggestions on hard drives?? This is what im working with.

Sony consumer electronics guide: PCV-RX470DS - More Specifications

How many GB would you be looking for?

How about 320GB for $120?

Western Digital Caviar RE 320GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM at Newegg.com