Well, I violated my own policy...I agreed to look at this laptop for a co-worker's son. I usually only work on my family's systems.
 
The system originally had Windows Media Center installed on it. The youngster decided that he wanted to put Windows XP on the system, so he truely wiped the hard drive clean. Unfortunately, he apparently wiped the recovery partition in the process.
 
He is the legal owner of the laptop.
 
The laptop will not load any OS. The DVD drive just spins down and halts the process. I told them to call Sony and ask for a set of recovery DVD's which they did. Same issue with the recovery DVD boot (1st disk). The cd starts and hangs on "please wait"...dead in the water no matter how long you wait.
 
I tried mimicking as best I could, from what I could find on Google, to be the original partitions on the system. No go.
 
I can run the Puppy Live CD fine (which I used to try and partition the hard drive). System Rescue CD will spin down as well and halt, as does any other system utility CD.
 
The keyboard dies as well, as a valid Windows XP Pro CD hangs at the menu to choose recovery or install..no keyboard input.
 
I reset the bios back to factory defaults with no results.
 
I assume this system is dead in the water, as the hidden recovery partition held either some bios settings, system ID settings, or drivers needed for the system. All drivers out there on the Sony site are for Windows Media Center.
 
Any ideas out there? I have had the system now for a week and need to either find a solution, or give them the bad news on Monday that a Sony tech. needs to recover the system.
 
Dan