Hi Guys, Hope you can assist me in this problem.
I'm trying to reinstall Windows onto my newly acquired but poorly Sony Viao laptop - VGN-NR31J which ran Vista Home Premium OEM - which had started having problems loading but worsened to 'No Operating System found'. Suspected the hard drive so took it out but it can't be picked up as an external drive on my pc. I've invested in a new Hitachi Sata HDD and replaced it. Unfortunately the prev owner had no original windows disc and no recovery discs at all.
I've got a Windows Vista Upgrade disc and a Windows XP Home install disc from my pc so was going to install XP, upgrade it with my Vista Upgrade disc and change the Product key back to the original shown on the Windows Sticker on the Sony laptop - is this logical/correct?
Anyway, i first tried to setup windows but at the stage where you need to enter Coninue (or recovery option) it advises that it can't detect any hard drive (PS: the Phoenix BIOS does detect the size of the new disc but doesn't give any more info on the disc or Sata/Raid options.
I have seen posts which indicate changing Bios settings for Sata/Raid but no options for this; other posts suggest SATA drivers required - so i downloaded the Vista Sata driver from Sony website for the model and put it on a floppy in a USB attached floppy drive - when i action F6 at Windows initial install it tells me later that it can't detect the floppy drive and i have to exit install.
I'm now lost a bit! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I'm trying to reinstall Windows onto my newly acquired but poorly Sony Viao laptop - VGN-NR31J which ran Vista Home Premium OEM - which had started having problems loading but worsened to 'No Operating System found'. Suspected the hard drive so took it out but it can't be picked up as an external drive on my pc. I've invested in a new Hitachi Sata HDD and replaced it. Unfortunately the prev owner had no original windows disc and no recovery discs at all.
I've got a Windows Vista Upgrade disc and a Windows XP Home install disc from my pc so was going to install XP, upgrade it with my Vista Upgrade disc and change the Product key back to the original shown on the Windows Sticker on the Sony laptop - is this logical/correct?
Anyway, i first tried to setup windows but at the stage where you need to enter Coninue (or recovery option) it advises that it can't detect any hard drive (PS: the Phoenix BIOS does detect the size of the new disc but doesn't give any more info on the disc or Sata/Raid options.
I have seen posts which indicate changing Bios settings for Sata/Raid but no options for this; other posts suggest SATA drivers required - so i downloaded the Vista Sata driver from Sony website for the model and put it on a floppy in a USB attached floppy drive - when i action F6 at Windows initial install it tells me later that it can't detect the floppy drive and i have to exit install.
I'm now lost a bit! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.