Solved! Sony Vaio new hard drive install, Windows 7 USB won't boot.

[wyoua]

I've got a Sony Vaio F series laptop 64 (about 10 years old) that the hard drive died in, i got a new one, went to Rufus (lots of people on reddit said to use it) and got a copy of Window 7 (i've tried three different ones) I tried using my product key but windows says in was installed at sony, and sony (every number i can find) has basically told me to go pound sand.

At first, all it says is "operating system not found" when i use the USB, it doesn't say that anymore, just black screen with the little flashing white line on the top left corner.

I pressed F2 and enabled external device boot (i changed Network boot, but nothing changed with that either) made boot priority "external device" 1st priority, saved it, i've tried every F keys there is and everyone keeps saying press "assist" when booting, but it does nothing but black screen,

Did the F2 then F1 trick, nothing. Something that did change when i did the second windows 7 iso try was when you hold F12 and boot, it would say "operating system not found"

I've google'd everything i can thing of, i spend what money i had on the hard drive, so pretty broke right now, using a friends computer right now.

Could i be formating it wrong? i have no idea what it should be, just using the defaults, "standard windows install" "gpt" "uefi"(non csm) "GSP1RMCPRXFRER_EN_DVD" "fat32" "8192 bytes"

I just don't know what to do, any help would be great.

 

[hang-the-9]

Not sure where you got your Windows 7 disk from, download the version that your system came with here https/www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-iso-download-tool

Then download the Windows 7 USB creation tool from Microsoft and use that to make a bootable USB from the ISO file. I have used this many times, it never failed to work for me.

 

[wyoua]

Thank you for your help, unfortunately it didn't work, i'm pretty sure its the computer, i don't think sony allows USB boot, nothing has worked. I'm gonna try a CD, then i guess ill have to break down and just buy a windows 7 CD from ebey i guess.

How hard is it to install something like Linux?

 

[hang-the-9]

Thank you for your help, unfortunately it didn't work, i'm pretty sure its the computer, i don't think sony allows USB boot, nothing has worked. I'm gonna try a CD, then i guess ill have to break down and just buy a windows 7 CD from ebey i guess.

How hard is it to install something like Linux?

Linux should install as easily as Windows, but you do need the boot media working. As long as you pick a pretty common distribution that has a good interface. Ubuntu is one that many people use.