Vaio will not boot from CD

abottig

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Nov 9, 2010
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Vaio laptop.

Internal Optical Drive is set as the first boot device in BIOS. CD Drive accepts discs, and you can hear it spin up... I've tried booting from Vista CD and UBCD. No luck.

The screen does not display "Press any key to boot from CD..."

Very strange. Any ideas?

EDIT:
I have also excluded all other devices from booting. I am left with a message reading "Operating System not found."
 
Solution
Ok, I finally figured this out. The problem is that the more modern Vaio BIOSs support UEFI booting by default. This is the modern way and works great with Win 7-64. Commercial disks such as Windows installers carefully put both formats on the disk so they work in any machine. But if you create a bootable CD yourself, it likely won't. I was creating a HDClone bootable disk and these will not be bootable under UEFI. When I tested my bootable disk I did so on a machine that didn't happen to support UEFI so I just assumed my disk was fine.

Luckily the Vaio has a setting for Legacy boot. Once I set that, it booted from the optical drive no problem.

I notified Sony support so maybe someone else will be spared these problems. I guess I do...
Press the F11 key (or maybe F8 key) several times during boot to get the Advanced Boot Menu.
Choose CDROM from there.

Excluding all other devices from booting and a message reading "Operating System not found" is normal if it can't find a bootable CD in the DVD drive.

 

abottig

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I solved the problem, sort of.

My goal was to boot from the Vista disc. So I just used a USB flash drive. I was able to repair the OS, etc...

However, I still could not figure out how to boot from CD. Even after excluding all drives but optical, the system still would not boot to CD. The disc and drive work fine otherwise.

This is the first time I have seen this problem. My first reaction is to blame Sony. Or maybe I haven't fixed enough computers yet?
 

wardell

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Jan 16, 2012
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I am having the same problem. However in my case I do have bootable CDs as they will boot another PC. Not just my Sony Vaio GRRRRR. Plus I have another Windows bootable CD the Vaio will boot from but it crashes during the install, presumably because it's not "Sony Windows".

Not sure how to boot Windows from a flash drive. I think I can try booting Ubuntu from a flash drive. Maybe somehow I can start the restore CD from there.

What a pain.
 

johnvoisey

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Jul 11, 2012
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I have a Sony Vaio PCG-7121M (windows vista)

It refuses point blank to boot from hard drive or cd.

From CD I have tried every windows, linux and dos boot cd in my "ample" collection ALL of which work on the other computers in the house. If I press the ESC after ctrl-alt-del I sometimes manage to get to a menu that offers me the choice to specifically boot from the cd or the hdd. It does not matter which I pick, the rend result is always the same, a few pathetic whirls of the cd drive, or flashes of the hdd, and then an underline cursor in the top left of the screen.

If I try pressing, or holding down the F10 key ... all I get are beeps every ttime i press the F10 (or any other) key.

And for the record the POST is clearly seeing the HDD and CD (otherwise how could it name them in the boot menu ?)

But get this ...

If I use F2 to go into "setup" and enable the "external" boot devices, then put a "pen drive linux" or "ultimate boot" usb stick in the usb slot, it boots from THAT. Once I have booted from that, I can see the contents of the HDD no problem. Just not in Windows (!)

Drives me mad. Any ideas ?




No joy. It aslso refuses point blank to boot from the hard drive.
 

nhoover55

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Oct 27, 2010
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I have the same problem with a Sony Vaio SVS15116FXS.

I know it can boot from the optical drive since when I upgraded the HDD it came with the a SSD and installed a fresh version of Windows it booted from the Windows installer disk no problem.

But now I want to image the drive to make a backup. So I tested my bootable CD (also tried DVD) on another computer - works fine. On the Sony, with Optical driver first in boot order (the default), it spins pathetically as someone said, then just boots windows. I've tried an external CD drive with External Device enabled and set first in the order, but it just plain doesn't work. I also tried creating a bootable USB stick but can't get it to boot from there either.

I've filed a bug with Sony (actually two: not only does it ignore boot order if there is an OS on the HDD, but you can only reorder the boot devices - not disable any.) Highly annoying.

I'll post back here if I ever get a resolution.
 

nhoover55

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Ok, I finally figured this out. The problem is that the more modern Vaio BIOSs support UEFI booting by default. This is the modern way and works great with Win 7-64. Commercial disks such as Windows installers carefully put both formats on the disk so they work in any machine. But if you create a bootable CD yourself, it likely won't. I was creating a HDClone bootable disk and these will not be bootable under UEFI. When I tested my bootable disk I did so on a machine that didn't happen to support UEFI so I just assumed my disk was fine.

Luckily the Vaio has a setting for Legacy boot. Once I set that, it booted from the optical drive no problem.

I notified Sony support so maybe someone else will be spared these problems. I guess I do agree that the BIOS is working correctly (silently ignoring a badly formatted bootable disc) but I warning sure would be nice.
 
Solution

kaustav82

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Nov 24, 2012
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hi can you please tell mee how did you do the setting for the legacy boot for vaio? im having similar problem , vaio wont boot from CD. Can you please help? please email me at kaustav.malakar@yahoo.com
 

raperic

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May 8, 2013
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raperic

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May 8, 2013
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hi abottig i a new in this but u could try this turn off ur sony vio when it is shut down look for a button that says assist press on itt will satrt giving u the menú options
 

Goutham Sarang

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Jun 6, 2013
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hi..

how did you change your vaio to legacy boot. pls explain. i am having vaio vpceb24en.
 

humbletim

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Sep 18, 2013
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I can now boot my dvd. Let's hope the install goes fine! Cheers
 

prentiw1

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Dec 8, 2013
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Thank You , you are a gentleman Saved me a sleepless night The Wiz


 

pertheus

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Mar 27, 2009
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I have a vaio 13A17GBB model.
I´m tying to run Kaspersky Boot Disc 10 (w/Linux). So, If I choose UEFI (default) mode, I can´t boot from CD/DVD driver but the hdd is detected.
However, if I change to Legacy mode, I can boot from CD/DVD but the hard drive is not detected.
Any ideas?