I have a Sony Vaio model VGC-RA820G with Intel P4 3.20 GH. Running windows XP. I started having problems yesterday at booting up. My first problem was a screen which told me I had a third hard disk failure at bootup and told me to press F2 to resume which brought up the BIOS screen. Going through all the settings I didn't see any problems so I exited and tried to re-boot. Went to same screen again so I decided to try the recovery CDs to fix who knows what. I start the recovery process with the strat up CD computer recognizes it and loads it fine, I get a prompt for the second recovery CD and after loading it I get an error message about partition size not available and I need to abort the recovery. I get upset, and just as I'm saying WTF it reboots on it's own, windows loads and I'm back to normal. I shut it down after a while and ever since then every time I want to use the computer I have to go through the same nonsense to boot up.

Is my Hardrive getting ready to die ?

Should I use the go back feature and try to revert to an earlier date of known good configuration ?

Should I try to use the Recovery CDs to restore back to factory settings ?

also during one of my booting sequences I received an error about a video card problem.

I'll try to get back on tonight, hopefully someone from the day crew can shed some light on this

sounds like your harddrive is going bad or is already died

Quoted: sounds like your harddrive is going bad or is already died

Yup.

Thanks, I was afraid of that. Which hard drive brand should I be looking for ? I've got my case open and I don't see the familiar IDE cables so it must be a new standard. I have a small red cable running to my motherboard. What interface is this


ETA if I do install a new hard drive how do I get my windowsXP back on it? Sony did not package a dik of the OS with the computer, it was pre-installed

it sounds like its using SATA.   I would suggest a Seagate hardrive.  To get windows back on the system you will need to call Sony and order the recovery cd's.  

my sony uses seagate I had to replace a non seagate drive awhile ago!!!