HELP - Reinstall from recovery partition.

Hello all,

I have a Sony Vaio VPCEC4SOE I bought cheap - needs a new screen.
After purchasing first thing I done was a Reinstall of windows using F10 on boot up and following instructions.
However after all finished Task manager showed 90+ processes at idle and the amount of bloatware was more than I had ever seen included with any PC.

So, Made up a Windows 7 Install disc as I wanted to go for a totally fresh install. Once installed it asked for product key - I checked underneath and half of the sticker is missing (I know I should have checked before hand!) Plus thinking about it after I really don't think the product key can be reused even if it is on the same machine (can someone confirm?)

I now have a nice clean operating system, but no product key, that will self destruct in 27 days!
So I would like to return to VAIO factory state. I have checked and recovery partition is still there and intact - 13gb, but how can I reinstall from this partition? F10 now does nowt on boot up.

Thanks in advance,
Tony.

The product key CAN be reused.

I don't know anything about Sony recovery partitions, but am wondering if you can still make a set of recovery disks and restore from them, rather than from the recovery partition?

I didn't think the product key can be reused - if thats the case, I would like to reinstall to VAIO spec, pull the key and then reinstall a fresh copy using the product key that i now have.

Have phoned Sony and recovery discs are nigh on £50!! Forget that, there must be another way around it. I could buy a new copy of windows for not a lot more.

I will have a look at trying to boot from that partition, but I'm sure I tried this using a program called BCD, and it wouldn't boot throwing an error code.
Will try the suggestion above quickly

biturbo said:

I didn't think the product key can be reused - if thats the case, I would like to reinstall to VAIO spec, pull the key and then reinstall a fresh copy using the product key that i now have.

If you reinstall to VAIO spec by using the recovery partition or recovery disks, I'm not sure you can then retrieve the product key that was on the sticker.

The sticker key is not the key used by Sony to activate the original install and would not be the key used to activate any recovery install. The original install used an OEM key and I think key retrieving applications can only get that OEM key if you recovered to VAIO specs.

Short of buying new Windows, your best hope may be to restore to VAIO spec and then "decrapify" the install.

Ok, thank you so far for your help. Just noticed that was your 7,500 post

What does the sticker product key relate to? Ive called microsoft and the indian call centre I got through to was about as useful as a chocolate teapot!
Edit/ I only wondered if they could provide me with the missing 15 digits

If you had the sticker key, you could use it to do a clean install. When you buy Windows, you are paying for the Product Key. OEMs such as Sony are legally required to include the sticker, even though it is not used for the Windows installation provided by the OEM.

In your situation, if you had the sticker key, you could go online to mydigitallife.info, a Microsoft partner, and download a legit Windows 7 ISO file, burn it to a disk, install it, and activate with the product key on the sticker.

Maybe that is what you did a few days ago?

The sticker key is for a particular edition of Windows, such as Home Premium, and can't be used to activate some other edition.

Yeah, exactly. I have a windows 64 home edition cd I made from the windows site aswell as a seperate repair disc. I installed a fresh copy before realising that the sticker was half missing! The thing is I have 4 other spares/repairs laptops, two of which have duff hard drives, but both stickers intact. Can I not just use one of the product keys from the back of these to register this copy?

Ive just tried booting from E: The recovery partition, and it comes up with a startup error. I used BCD to do this though and this is what I got:

Windows failed to start due to a recent hardware or software.. blah blah.
File: \windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt

The thing is if you look at the drives in 'Computer' the E: partition says Vaio recovery and has the VAIO logo, so there must be some way around this. There are however no runable apps from this partition.

I think I will have a go at trying with disk management now.

Here is a pic of disk management and of drives. Strange that my computer showsthat recovery partition is nearly full, where as disk management shows recovery is empty?