Solved Need Major Help With Troubleshooting Sony VAIO Tap 20

boweasel

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Messages
32
Model SVJ2021, running 64 bit 8.0.

When I start this, it immediately goes into Preparing Automatic Repair, followed by Diagnosing Your PC. Needless to say that is soon followed by Automatic Repair Couldn't Repair Your PC.

I've been exasperated by computers in the past, but this might be stretching me to the point of no return.

When I go into Troubleshoot after it tells me it can't fix it automatically, I tried a Restore. No Restore Points. Then I went to the command prompt, navigated to C:\Windows and did a Fixboot, Fixmbr and a Rebuildbcd. The first 2 completed, but the rebuild found 0 Windows installations. I went back into Troubleshooting and selected Refresh Your PC which keeps your files but fixes Windows problems. No go - There was a problem refreshing your PC. No changes were made.

I got out a Windows 8 64 disk and looked for the optical drive. There is none.

I got out an external CD reader, popped in the disk and went to plug it in to a USB port. Uh-uh. There is only 2 frickin USB ports on this monstrosity. One is used for the keyboard and the other for the mouse. Incredible. How can Sony have been making computers for umpteen years and design a Windows 8 machine with 2 ports?

I have no USB hub, so I unplug the mouse, turn off the PC, plug in the external reader, hit the Assist button which allows you to get into the BIOS, boot from an external device, etc. I go into the BIOS, change the boot order, save the changes, go back to the Assist screen and hit the key to boot from an external device. I get a message - No Operating System Found.

I'm pleading for some assistance from someone who has some knowledge of how this unit works (or doesn't work). My meager bag of tricks is about empty.

*****

Update

I used another PC to clear some space on an external HDD, then used the Rescue Disk option off of Advanced Troubleshooting. Since I still only have the 2 USB ports I had to unplug the keyboard. It's now rescuing the Documents, Pictures and Favorites onto the external drive
 
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My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 home premium
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Inspiron 3521
Since you can get into a command prompt, maybe you could look in the windows\system32\logfiles\srt folder and see if you can find the srttrails.txt file. If you do, copy it to a flash drive, or somewhere you can access and read or attach it.

The text file might give us some indication of what could be wrong.

Also, when you boot and look at the bios or boot device menu and see if a Windows Boot Manager is present and can be selected.

Did you have any external drives plugged in either before or when the problem first occurred?

You can get a wireless mouse/keyboard combo that only uses one USB port, if it becomes necessary.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
After the recovery finished everything was fine. I still have no idea why Sony would construct a computer without a CD drive and with only 2 USB ports. Are they that desperate to cut corners that they manufacture products that border on defective?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8 home premium
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Inspiron 3521
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