GUIDE : Clean Vista install using Extracted Recovery Image ( On a Vaio CS or Others)

[mrhaboobi]

How to Extract Recovery Disk for Vaio CS ( Or Other Machines ).

Well ive been through the process, and thanks to the help of alot of people who already posted links and utilities i can give a quick write up on how to do this. I have a Vaio CS, but i have a feeling that this process is pretty generic and you should be able to apply to any machine.

So people know, this keeps the recovery partition on your machine, so your machine should be able to be restored in future without the recovery CDs ( STILL MAKE SURE TO BURN THEM ).

This will give you a clean Vaio image with no bloatware and only the drivers and software required for the machine, you then have the option to install options files if you want.

Before you start, THIS WILL WIPE YOUR MACHINE, if you have any files you want to keep back them up!!

Also if this does any damage to you then i wont be held accountable, this is the process i used for my machine and it has worked for me.

DO THESE STEPS FIRST

1. MAKE RECOVERY DVD's -- do make sure you do this, i went as far as testing the dvd's it made to make sure it works ok.
   
2. Copy the following folder c:\Program Files\Sony\Vaio Recovery this is the recovery console, which for some reason i still cant find on the recovery CD at all? Just copy onto a USB key, you will need to manually copy it back onto the laptop after.

ACCESSING THE RECOVERY CONTENTS

There are numerous ways to do this. I'll outline the process i used.

Option 1

1. I copied the contents of the dvds that the recovery console created onto a large external hard drive, needs to be around 10gig or more. ( depends on what stuff stuff has put in your version ). This was the simpilest way i could think of doing it at the time.

Option 2

1. Start the recovery console application.
2. Select the option to resinstall software and drivers. If you follow this process through you should get to a screen where you can select the software or drivers you want to re install. Leave the window open, DONT CLOSE IT. While this window is open the magic hidden recovery partition becomes visible and you will be able to get access to the recovery data. On my machine it was h:, you can copy the data as you did above onto an external drive and do the extracting steps below the same way

Option 3

1. i didnt realise this was an option at the time. Dont do anything here, technically you skip this step all together. As i was doing the dvd extraction on a second machine i couldnt use this approach.

Extract the data

There are two excellent posts which explain what we are going to be doing, give them a read to understand more about the background of this process. Credit to all the people that posted in those threads, they figured out the hard parts for us all.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=233256
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=121966

1. Download the software from this post
   
   http://forum.notebookreview.com/show...0&postcount=28
   
   Thanks to bdg for this simple to use tool, Here is a direct link
   
   http://rapidshare.com/files/147096173/mod2wim.zip
   
   
2. Extract mod2wip.zip to your c:\ i place mine in the root in a mod2wim folder ( C:\mod2wim )
3. Run Mod2Wim.bat This pops up a console window with some options.

If you did option 1 or 2 above then use this approach

• Select option "S". This lets you point to where you have stored the recovery data ( either from the copied dvds or the recovery partion on the machine ). For me i pointed it to c:\VaioBackup\ as this is where i stored my files, you need the trailing \.

If you did option 3 above use this apparoch

• According to the readme.txt in mod2wim it says you dont have to select the recovery drive, it will mount it automatically if you leave it as Z:\ Incase that doesnt work i found the hidden drive on my machine was H:\.

Now carry on regardless of which step you did.

1. Select option 2 ( Copy&Process MOD/SYN Files ) - This will run for a while and will eventually put the .WIM files in the Wim folder ( c:\mod2wim\wim )
2. Select option 5 ( [Un]Mount Patched Files ) - This will go through the wim folder and extract the wims. A folder will be created for each wim and you will be able to see the MSI or setup.exe files. This is what you wanted

You have now extracted the wim files. There should also be a very large sony.wim in the wim folder, the sony.wim is a clean vista install with the basic sony drivers

NOTE: If you have been doing this on your new vaio will either need to copy the extracted wim folders to dvd or to an external HDD ( dont copy the sony.wim we will do something special with that ), as afterwards you will want to install some of that software and we are going to format the drive.

BURNING THE SONY IMAGE

Ok so we have sony.wim, this is a clean vaio image, which we will use to restore our laptop with. if you read the links above people suggested using a partition things like that. I decided to want to try and do this from DVD.

1. With your favourite DVD burning software burn the following files to DVD. Put all files and folders in the root.
   
   • a. sony.wim ( found in c:\mod2wim\wim )
   • b. imagex ( this is a folder, copy the entire folder from c:\mod2wim )
   • c. the Recovery console data you copied in one of the first steps above.
2. Once the DVD is burnt you now have a dvd to do the clean install from.

Ok so at this point you should have a DVD with the clean sony image, and a external drive or dvd's with the extracted software ( Sony Tools and Stuff like that ). Now we want to restore the laptop using the clean image.

DOING THE CLEAN INSTALL

To do this next steps you need a Vista DVD. Remember that ANY vista DVD will work.

Alternatively you can create a boot disk or boot USB using similar steps to these links - i havent tried this process

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/0...ista-winpe-20/
http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71

Finally there appears to be a vista recovery disk floating around - Im about to try that out.

http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8776

any option should work we just need to get to the recovery console.

1. Stick the Vista DVD in your machine and turn on.
   
2. Follow the steps on the screen until you see an option to Repair Vista.
   
3. Select option Command Prompt (http://www.windowsreference.com/imag...mrecovery.jpg).
   
4. Stick your DVD that you made with the sony wim on it into your drive.
   
5. Type the following command at the prompt
   
   Format c: /q
   
   this will format your c:\ ( this will erase everything ! )
   
6. Once this is complete change to the cd drive ( mine was d:\ ) eg type d:
   
7. Now type the following command at the prompt
   
   imagex\imagex.exe /apply sony.wim 1 c:\
   
   this will apply the sony.wim image to your c:\

Once complete LEAVE THE DVD IN THE DRIVE. Close the console window and select restart.

The machine should now reboot and install vista. fingers crossed, remember dont take the dvd out of the machine until vista is completely installed, i dont know how or why but the dvd seems to get used, and when i tried without the DVD it gave errors.

Now you should have a clean machine up and running. The final step is to copy the vaio recovery console folder from your dvd to c:\programs files\sony

Now you can run the recovery console and reinstall the apps you want, also the extracted wim files may have additional applications which you cant seem to install from the recovery console, i know that i had Adobe elements as a wim, but couldnt re install from the recovery console.

Hope this helps someone

[Kaze]

anyone tried this on a vaio z?

[mrhaboobi]

Nope, but others have done this sort of thing on various other machines.. im just written the guide that holds peoples hands a bit more.. cant see why it wouldnt work?

[Kaze]

This wipes the recovery partition out as well too right?

[Kaze]

so did you get all drivers to work? i.e brightness , volume settings, the buttons etc.

[mrhaboobi]

Nope doesnt wipe the recovery partition, as i didnt try and do that, it just wipes out the c:\ ( not the recovery partition )

All drivers are installed with teh basic install apart from the wifi, the wifi is a seperate install. i have all the volume, av mode, and capture buttons working right now.. i havent tried the functions keys but i assume they wil work, pretty much i went through and installed a fair bit of the software that comes wth the machine, apart from bloatware and a few of the sony packages.. Seems to be faster i wish they would release xp drivers though..

[Kaze]

I have the raid 0 ssd so I'm not sure if I'll run into any problems.. It comes with 2 partitions excluding the hidden one.

[keilee]

So I did this step

Select option 5 ( [Un]Mount Patched Files ) - This will go through the wim folder and extract the wims. A folder will be created for each wim and you will be able to see the MSI or setup.exe files.

and I see the files within the WIN folder along with a folder for each WIN file -- but nothing is within the folders; Am I supposed to see installers inside of the folders after hitting 5 within the batch file program?

Thanks -- PS I have a Vaio Z

[Kaze]

The wim file is huge, wouldn't fit in a single layered dvd...

[Kaze]

this seems much more complicated on the raid...
basically C:\ is where Vista is when viewed in my computer but when u go into windows installation it tells you Vista is in D:\ and the dvd drive gets bumped to E:\ any RAID expert can explain this?