Sony Vaio Windows XP restore

[Covenant]

I've been given a non-booting Sony Vaio lappie. There's no cd drive or floppy but there should be a hidden partition with all the factory settings on the hard drive, and I'd like to restore Windows.
I'm being a bit lazy, cause I could remove the hard drive, make a bootable partition, copy the Windows files, and start the reload. but I believe there should be some keystrokes to set the restore process in motion when trying to boot the machine. Anyone have any ideas what the keystrokes may be?

Covenant.

Ps Virtual pint to the 1st correct solution

 

[Adywebb]

I believe the Vaio has a 'private' partition where the factory OS & program software is stored - but I'm not sure you can get access to it.


You normally have to run their 'Recovery Wizard' and burn recovery CD's and then use them when needed.

 

[Covenant]

Thanks for the reply.

I thought that lthe Sony (like a lot of other branded machines) had the partition from which you made the CD's but with no cd drive in the machine it's a bit difficult to boot up if Win isn't working. I guess it was originally a business laptop and everything was done through a network.

Covenant