My daughter has a Sony laptop - still in warranty. Several weeks ago she did not switch off properly and it went in to hibernation. Next day on start up gave messages failed to start up there was a problem.Talked to Sony who after numerous strategies failed to get it beyond the error message. Sent it to Sony who then told me there was liquid spillage and the motherboard was damaged. My warranty was invalid. Quizzing my daughter she admitted to the spillage but some 3 months previous. Bit dejected with Sony they sent me the PC back. Tried to start it and it went OKAY for a day. Then got the current problem. Starts up and goes through Winsows XP screens and VAIO but fails to open windows and goes blank then starts the whole process again and repeats this ad infinitum. I in despair left it for a week and started it up yesterday. OK again for a while. Was about to create a recovery CD but remembered that Sony had said that Norton Go Back appeared to preventing them from doing a system recovery. So naively I uninstalled Norton go back and let the laptop restart - big mistake as on start up the same problem occurrd (starts up, windows XP scren, VAIO screen then for a split second the blue windows screen before going blank and repeating the process. I have another older Sony laptop so I created a recovery disc. When I insert the boot up CD I created it whilrls up the boot CD and says Sony recovery in progress, then please wait and nothing happens.

Has anyone any ideas ?

Thanks

George

In order to verify that the hardware will function you could create a KNOPPIX Live CD.

http://www.knoppix.org/

This is an entire free Operating System that will boot and run off the CD.

The download is an ISO file that you will then need to burn to CD.

After the burn you can then boot that CD and KNOPPIX will load itself if your hardware is sound.

If you do find the hardware will function then you probably need to reinstall a retail version of XP or some other Operating System.

It sounds to me like your Sony recovery options are beyond repair.

If you want to test KNOPPIX and have any problems or questions just ask.