Hi again
Sony's recovery procedure looks like it's a little rough around the edges. Evidently it doesn't repartition and reformat the drive (though it should, really, to be effective for a FULL recovery). It apparently only offers to reformat whatever system partition it finds. So, OK, we'll help the Sony out by deleting the current partition.
The Sony PCG-F430 originally ships with a floppy drive right next to the DVD drive. It is removeable, however: it can slide in and out of its "multimedia bay" (you have to move a lever under it to remove it). If it is still there, you can start the computer from a bootable Win98 diskette (which starts the PC in DOS) and run a little utility called "fdisk". It's a handy little program that sets up and deletes partitions. If you don't have a bootable Win98/98se/Me floppy diskette, you can download a program that will create one from Radified's downloads page ---
http://radified.com/Files/bootmec.exe --- just put a blank floppy in your floppy drive & double-click the file to produce a bootable floppy diskette.
Put your bootable floppy in the floppy drive of your Sony, and restart the laptop. It should boot to a command prompt. Once at the A:> prompt, you'll type the command
fdisk. Then you'll choose selection
#4 to
Display the current partitions. Make a note of the partition type and number (there will likely be only one partition, but might be two). Then choose selection
#3:
Delete Partitions or Logical DOS Drive ... you'll delete any partitions you find, starting with Logical DOS partitions, then Extended partitions, and then the Primary DOS Partition. Then use option
#4 again, to make sure the drive contains no partitions at all. You will then be ready to use option
#1 to
Create a Primary DOS Partition. Let it take up all the hard drive space.
Once you've created the new Primary DOS Partition, which now consists of the entire hard drive, you can try the recovery procedure again. It should work this time.
If not, I think coffee & chocolates are a good choice as a nice break from your tech chores. Then post us a little note & we'll adjust the procedures until we get you going again.
Best of luck!
. . . Gary
P.S. if you want to read more details about that mysterious fdisk program, there's a well-know guide on Radified's webpages for fdisk. Here's a link ---
http://fdisk.radified.com/fdisk_partition.htm
And if you'd like a link to the manual for your Sony laptop, here's the main manual in the Adobe Reader format (".pdf") ---
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/PCGF430.PDF --- ... you'll need the free Adobe Reader to open the file (you can grab it from adobe.com if you don't already have it -- most PCs already have some version of the Reader)