This is a super slim PCG-z505sl, running Windows ME. Sad sucker won't boot anymore, bad bad Vaio!!!

This is a quirky notebook, one that I love to hate and hate to love. There's nothing on the PC - no floppy, no CD-Rom, nothing. Just the Sony iLink port, USB, and that's it.

So when Windows ME on it gave up the ghost, I couldn't exactly do a system restore with the CD-Rom that I don't have.

So first of all I pull out the USB floppy drive, and boot the thing into DOS. Do a scandisk on C: - no go, stops at 21% of directory structure.

So I try SCANREG /FIX, no go.

At this point I'm thinking "SPINRITE". However, the sucker costs $95 , won't work on NTFS, nor on drives larger than 40 GB. I'm not gonna waste $95 on a drive that needs to be replaced anyway.

Anyway, moral of the story, another SONY Vaio has given up the ghost. I'll NEVER advise anyone to ever buy a SONY VAIO notebook, laptop, PC, or anything SONY every again.

PS - my fix for this nasty bug? literally disassemble the VAIO, take out the dying hard drive, and slave it to my desktop to download the data. BAD BAD VAIO!!