Sony Has Three Excuses To Avoid Sending Free Vaio Recovery Disks

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Sony has three excuses to avoid sending free Vaio recovery disks

And even more ways to make it almost impossible for you to receive them

Subjects > Computers > Hardware > New Pc Missing Recovery Disks

Recently, (2004 with a Sony TR3A laptop), Sony has decided to stop shipping any recovery disks with their laptops. They have an extremely error prone 'Vaio Recovery Wizard' that you are supposed to use to try and create a set of disks with. If the program works, (and frequently it does not), you'll be forced to waste your first two hours, or more, with your machine, creating these disks.

Why should a $2000+ laptop not include $2 worth of CDs? Why should you have to waste hours of your time to create them? Why should you be treated like you bought the machine second hand from an auction or out of a surplus dealer without disks?

Remember this:

• You paid a lot of money for the machine
• The price was inflated by all the bundled software, including the operating system, accessories programs, device drivers, evaluation softwares, extra applications, etc.
• Without all that extra stuff, the hardware would be a lot cheaper. You've got a right to run all those programs on that machine as long as it is capable, and the integrity of the Master Boot Record, or partition sector, should not be the only thing ensuring that right.

If you contact Sony, about the "missing disks", you'll encounter several creative problems:

• Their website does not make their phone number readily apparent. Call 1-800 information to get their information. At the time of this writing, 1-800-4SonyPC worked.
• If you get through to a human, they'll register your computer, but then tell you that there are no recovery disks.
• If you ask to speak to a supervisor, the next agent will tell you that Microsoft prohibits them from sending any media. The Lie That Microsoft Doesn't Allow PC Manufacturers To Ship Recovery Disks .
• They'll try to tell you that most people have no problem with creating the disks.
• Here's the kicker: They admit that most people don't bother to create these disks until long after. Usually after they've had a problem with their machine. A problem that might make it impossible to even create the disks. At this point, Sony might sell the customer a set of disks.... They basically admitted that their strategy is to force any customer who has their PC for month or more to buy the disks. For other Sony laptops that did ship with the disks, and a replacement is needed, the cost is typically around $40.
• If you call right away after buying your new machine, and complain about the process, as mentioned above, they'll tell you that it's very rare to have a problem creating the disks, he'll tell you the lie about Microsoft prohibiting them from sending out media.
• Point out to the agent that they cost of Microsoft Operating System, and other applications like MSWorks, MSMoney, (PC-Cillin / Trend Micro / Norton / McAfee ) Anti-Virus and Security programs, etc., helped to inflate the cost of the machine, and you demand the right to continue running those softwares. You shouldn't be at the mercy of the integrity of the hard drive partition table.
• If you are irate enough, the agent might "request special permission to send you a set of recovery disks". Ah-ha! So they do exist!
• After a long wait on hold, they may try to tell you "The machine is too new, I can't find the item number, (SKU) for the disks!"

Recovery partitions are nothing new. Some programs that analyze the partitions on a drive will call the Sony partition a "Compaq Diagnostic Partition". Almost 10 years ago, Compaq included these partitions on their machines. At the time, before the advent of Viruses, this made sense. In the case of a failure, you'd have the files you need to diagnose, or even restore, your machine to some kind of working order.

While trying to successfully complete the process of making a set of recovery disks, I realized that the process is fundamentally flawed:

1. Disk Quality
   1. What Are Good Disks? How do you know your set of disks is any good? Sony recommends using "high quality CDs". If you search the net for information about this, you'll learn that all CDs are not created equal. If you buy a spindle of CDs, it's possible that while all the disks might be uniformly labelled, it's possible for different disks in the spindle to actually come from different manufacturers! Without using specialized programs to read hidden information from the CD, you really have no way to know if a given spindle of disks is any good.
   2. Lifetime of CDR disks Consumer grade CDs can be subject to flaking of the surface of the CD if placed in the wrong kind of CD holder, or subjected to the wrong kind of conditions.
2. Reliability of the Disk partition
3. Vulnerability to tampering
   1. Doubtless, the hardware manufacturers licenses to distribute software included on the machine requires them to distribute accurate copies of the software. Unfortunately, it's all too easy for the software on a hard drive to be tampered with, even at a sector by sector level, by viruses, trojan horses, worms, malicious people, etc.

Other articles

• Is Your New PC Missing It's Recovery Disks ?
• [Users find Microsoft's 'medialess' anti-piracy play hard to swallow] from The Gripe Line by Ed Foster.
• [Problems with Sony TR2A Recovery Wizard] - User was never able to make recovery disks using the supplied Sony utility. Titled Installing Windows XP Professional on the Sony Vaio TR2A Laptop by Phil Wherry

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