topic Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC in PCs & Accessories

Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:02:05 GMT

Hi all,

I've spent probably about 30 hours over the last couple of weeks establishing the best procedure for making a clean break from the factory image on my VGX-XL201 VAIO Media Center PC. After many CD-Rs, many hours of Googling and many hours of watching the "formatting C:\" progress bar roll slowly onwards, I finally seem to have my PC just how I like it - with all the software I want and none (or at least hardly any) of the software Sony wants me to have.

I extracted files from both the Application Recovery and System Recovery DVDs, customised an MCE 2005 installation CD with nLite and installed a couple of extra bits and pieces from the web to get to where I am now, and there was a lot of trial and error involved.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I want to guage interest in a thorough write up of the process I went through. To get a media center PC to clean install is not the same as with a laptop, and all the information I needed, whilst largely available on the Internet was all over the place. I'd like others to benefit from the time I've spent on this and so I'd like to write a detailed how-to. However, I don't want to spend my time doing this unless I know people are going to read it. If I write such a guide, will people find it useful?

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

Thalamus. — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:55:31 GMT

Hi wwarby,

Several members visit the board in search of information such as you've mentioned without ever posting, so I think if you have the time to post your detailed How-To I'm sure some members would find it useful.. :smileygrin:

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 09:15:33 GMT

Thanks mate,

I'll start work on it now. My plan is to write a complete guide from start to finish that anybody should be able to follow. I'll do it as a PDF or something so that I can put lots of screenshots in it, and post it here when I'm done.

-William

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:17:10 GMT

OK,

Here it is, after 12 hours of work, version 1.0 of my 51 page guide to performing a clean install of MCE 2005 on an XL201 Media Center PC. The document goes into a huge amount of detail but you can skip over the bits you don't want to read. Better to give too much information than not enough I say.

PDF: http://shared.wwarby.com/vgx-xl201-clean-install-guide.pdf
MS Word: http://shared.wwarby.com/vgx-xl201-clean-install-guide.doc

I had a problem trying to use the product key provided with my VAIO. It's all explained in the guide. I would be grateful if people couple post to this thread reporting their experiences - at least for a little while I'll show an interest in updating this document, especially if between us we can get a robust method for using the Sony-provided Windows product keys which works.

-William

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

Blencogo — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:21:00 GMT

Thank you William - you have been busy - excellent work.

I'll make this a sticky thread!

:smileygrin:

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

kee-lo_ — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:12:03 GMT

Yes I agree with Blencogo, excellent work William.

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

Seawit — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:13:08 GMT

Indeed quite an excellent professional level work. And i believe that these guidelines can be used in other computers as well.
Well done!!!

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:14:31 GMT

Thanks for the compliments guys I often post asking for help on forums so it's good to give something back when you can. The instructions in the guide need some validation from other users so hopefully that will be forthcoming from owners of the same or similar models to mine. There is definitely an issue regarding the use of product keys provided with the VAIO which we need to get to the bottom of. I'll probably work more on this problem because I'd really rather be using my own product key rather than one which is provided through my MSDN subscription from work.

I'll probably do a new guide for Vista on this media center PC when the driver set is officially released.

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

kee-lo_ — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 19:35:55 GMT

Hopefully you'll get some feedback from it, however positive or negitive it is.

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

@7908848805001668 — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:23:53 GMT

Just bought a 201 - and picked this up. Thanks in advance, I think it'll be helpful. Have just upgraded the memory and added 2 hard discs. Will now look around to see if it's easy to RIAD 0 the two new discs without going through the Recovery disk process in the manual.

Will start a new thread on this perhaps.

AndyR

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

herpof — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 21:08:20 GMT

Besides doing all this stuff, you can always download a windows xp media center edition from bittorrent and then use your legitimate license key (it's in the back of your laptop).

There is absolutely nothing illegal with this and you can then activate your copy via the internet. It's the most clean and quick install!

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

tabaheights — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:58:42 GMT

Is there a similar guide to cleaning up the Wireless Lan access point configaration on the VGC-RA 304?

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

Quedos — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:47:53 GMT

I would be interested if the same process works for other desktop models I have a Vaio RC202 the model prior to the Blueray version - but still newly purchased. In addition I would like to know if you had any difficulty establishing Recovery discs as my system disguarded 6 discs today at 97% complete saying they were faulty or corrupt and that i had to break them up and throw them away..... so its back to the drawing board for me i will be phoning sony tomorrow and the disc customer service department ugh!!!!

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

ITTroll — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 08:49:53 GMT

I'll probably do a new guide for Vista on this media center PC when the driver set is officially released.

Top marks, a very professional guide. Are you still planning to do the Vista guide? The official drivers are now available.

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

jamesbramsdon — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:03:33 GMT

I have also wasted lots of time getting my XL201 exactly how I want it - and then having to repeat from scratch when I had a major software/incompatibility problem.

However, I am a bit of a novice, and don't understand the difference between your "clean install" procedure, and creating an image/back-up of your setup using Norton Ghost etc?

Does your process offer any major benefits which can't be obtained by restoring using Ghost etc? If so, I may need to get hold of the XP discs required for your procedure.

Thanks

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 05:52:51 GMT

I'll probably do a new guide for Vista on this media center PC when the driver set is officially released.

Top marks, a very professional guide. Are you still planning to do the Vista guide? The official drivers are now available.

Yes, I probably will do a guide for Vista. When my Vista upgrade DVD arrived a couple of weeks ago I started to perform the upgrade and found I had to apply a BIOS update to make the graphics card work. Sadly the BIOS flashing utility provided by Sony crashed and corrupted my BIOS, and now I am in the process of sending my PC back to Sony in France to have the BIOS chip replaced, so it'll be a couple of weeks yet at least until I get the chance to try again.

The process for Vista, at least in the case where you buy the PC with MCE2005 and get an upgrade DVD from Sony is going to be considerably easier than the process for MCE2005, because the only method of install supported by Sony is a clean install of the operating system. However, there are plenty of pitfalls as I have already discovered, not the least of which is the method for flashing the BIOS. They also give you another applications disc which needs to be filtered unless you want bucket loads of useless software on your PC.

Watch this space...

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

wwarby — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:14:59 GMT

I have also wasted lots of time getting my XL201 exactly how I want it - and then having to repeat from scratch when I had a major software/incompatibility problem.

However, I am a bit of a novice, and don't understand the difference between your "clean install" procedure, and creating an image/back-up of your setup using Norton Ghost etc?

Does your process offer any major benefits which can't be obtained by restoring using Ghost etc? If so, I may need to get hold of the XP discs required for your procedure.

Thanks

The difference is that the process I have described lets you install what you want on your PC, not what Sony thinks you might want. At the factory, Sony installs dozens of bundled applications on your behalf, most of which are poor quality, out of date versions or just plain useless. Most of them have absolutely no commercial value otherwise Sony wouldn't give you them for free. Essentially they (like every other PC supplier) try to make it look like they're giving you a load of added value with your PC when what they're really doing is cluttering your hard drive with worthless junk.

For some novice users who may not know that there are better or newer alternatives to most of these applications available, the bundled software may be welcome. For most experienced users though, it's like you've just bought a house and the developer has filled it the ugly second hand furniture and 70s decor which you have to dispose of and strip away before you can start decorating it how you want.

Frustratingly, Sony don't give you the Windows install CD any more so you have to obtain the install CD another way. The guide I have presented here describes how to use a Windows install CD to get to a point where you have Windows and only the essential drivers and applications installed to make your media PC run. Once you get to that point, you can take a ghost image and you have a clean PC image without all the junk software and configuration provided by Sony. This is quite a common requirement amongst experienced users with new PCs and Sony make it sufficiently difficult to achieve that I thought a guide was in order.

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

ChalkyWhite71 — Tue, 01 May 2007 07:32:16 GMT

Hello Wwarby. Many thanks for this. I think I'll print it then read it whilst socialising with my wife, who hasn't seen me for a while whilst I've been trying to get my XL201 just the way I want it.
What I'd like to see is a list of the software components that can definitely go, e.g. that annoying Viiv software that INSISTS on highlighting new nodes on my network, despite me going into the notification settings and marking options accordingly. I'll hunt around for Viiv threads, rather than expecting people to clutter this thread helping me with my problems. Where's that violin!!

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

MrsHarris — Tue, 15 May 2007 08:19:33 GMT

This is an excellent write-up... I'm hoping to do something similar for the RC-202 but for a fresh install rather than using the restore discs. I've just got to work out which drivers to use 1st

Re: Clean Install on Media Center XL201 PC

carpeck16 — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:44:39 GMT

Hi Ive got my 201 running in duel boot xp @ vista .Media center works better with XP I stream video to a X box in an other room. Video streaming can be a problem Idownloaded Transcode 360 and this did the tric .Any usfull info on the 201 would be helpfull