First thing is to check that you do not have a restoration partition on the laptop . . many do. You would see "Press XXX to restore the system" when you first boot. If you have such a facility, it will restore the pc to the state it was shipped, O/S, drivers and apps.
This is by far the easiest way to reinstall, if not . .
First thing to do is download the drivers from the Sony Website . . you can look in Device Manager to see what you need, but at a minumum you should get the drivers for:
Chipset
Video
Sound
Network Adaptors
Modem
They should all be available on the Sony Support site, which is fairly easy to use.
Once you have XP installed, install the Chipset driver first, then the others. Once you have the network adapor drivers, you can go back for any that are missing. I like to run the Belarc Advisor to give me a complete report on what hardware and software is on the pc.
Early in the reinstallation process, you will have a chance to delete partitions and recreate them . . this will give you a clean slate to install on.
This is a good guide to reinstalling XP . . you might want to print it for reference during the install.
http://www.techsupportforum.com/cont...icles/158.html
This is a site that walks you thru a simulated XP installation:
http://www.echoproject.net/en/software/catalog.html
Let us know if you need anything more.