HELP HELP VGX-XL302

[HOCKENHULL]

About five weeks ago I proudly purchased the XL302. For some reason the system will not read any type of disc or memory cards. I have upgraded with all the Sony upgrades except the latest video driver as this made my samsung rear projection TV to display everything in a bright green colour. I have installed the regular Windows upgrades. The machine was working fine up until a few weeks ago.

I have tried unistalling the driver and then re-installing the combi driver but this has no affect. I have tried doing a system restore back to a point to which I know the drive was working properly but this prompted an un specified error and could not be comleted.

I have tried using a boot disc as sony suggested to see if the actual drive is working and again this did not work. The drive pulls the disc in and begis to read it, the cursor on the display recognises there is a disc "spinning disc" and then just stops with the message please insert a disc.

Has anyone got any ideas to what the problem could be as I am well and truly baffled.

Also has anyone had any problems with the Video Drivers. I tried installing the latest one from the sony vaio site as recommended but had to roll back to the original as this made the screen go green and completely out of shape. Then tried to update to the latest one fromk Nvidia and this just gave me a blank screen and had to re start the system. Would the latest drivers stop the judder I get from live TV.

Your help would be much appreciated as Sony are pretty much baffled the same as me. As the drive seems to be working and it appears to be a software error somewhere. I now its still under warranty but I dont really want my computer stuck over in France for the next couple of weeks where they stated they would have to send it.

Cheers Chris

[FHB]

I have tried using a boot disc as sony suggested to see if the actual drive is working and again this did not work. The drive pulls the disc in and begis to read it, the cursor on the display recognises there is a disc "spinning disc" and then just stops with the message please insert a disc.

Eventually, the SATA cable is not properly connected to the drive or the mainboard. The cable itself might be defective. When you put in a bootable disc and reboot the computer (booting from CD must be enabled in the BIOS and must have a higher priority than booting from harddisk) the computer should start the software that's on the disc. If this doesn't work, it can't be a software issue because booting from a disc is handled by the BIOS only. Did you try with another bootable disk, just to make sure there's no unreadable track on the disk itself?

[HOCKENHULL]

Thanks for your reply I will try your suggestion. Not that computer minded so dont really know what I'm doing but will give it a go.

Thanks Chris

[HOCKENHULL]

Also the memory card reader does not work. I have a Mini SD whch has been formatted. There are pictures on the ard and when placed no the system the card reader does not register it. Does this mean together with the above problem Hsve I got a major software problem as it does seem to like any of the hardwate other than the hardd drive. Any sugestions would be helpfull as I'm not much of a computer techie.

Thanks Chris

Does anybody know if any of the laest Windows updates may have up the running of the ardware on my system. I would rstore to a point before I installed these automatic updates but during the restore the cumpeter states "unspecified error" and cannot restore the computer and reverts back to the original settings


Your help is needed and would be reatly appreciated