Hi, I have a sony RXA842 with XP Home addition that I have replaced the hard drive in. I have the system recovery cd's that came with the computer but every time I try to run the recovery process my system lockd up. I tried a different copy of XP pro and the same thing happens. Can any body help.

why did you replace the hard drive?.
can you use the original hard drive as a master and the new one as slave ?

is everything connected correctly?

The old one crashed. I can load win 98 with no problem.

I have also had problems with recovery discs (i.e. useless crap), complete format and a clean install were what worked for me.

If you can run Win98, try upgrading to XP.(before attempting format+clean install)