Resolved Trying to replace bad Hard Drive in Sony Laptop

Hello All,
I have been trying to replace the Hard Drive on a Sony Vaio Laptop (Model: VGN-NS140E) and I’ve come across an issue I can’t seem to get past. I’m trying to replace the old Seagate Momentus 5400.4 250GB with a nearly identical Seagate Momentus 5400.6 250GB. I was hoping someone could help me figure out what I’m doing wrong.

A little background:
The computer belongs to a family member who claims they dropped it and it stopped working shortly thereafter. They asked for my help when the Best Buy people told them they needed a new Hard Drive and boot disks to fix the computer. They didn’t have boot disks because Sony apparently doesn’t include them (it seems they provide internal software to allow you to make them). They did recover all of their files, but were not able to save the Hard Drive. There was an error about "cannot find boot sector" or "BOOTMNGR.EXE will not run" on start-up.

Things I’ve tried:
-Sony has a built-in Recovery and Restore screen that you can get to by pressing F10 on startup. I tried using an USB enclosure and the "File Recovery" tool to get everything onto the new Hard Drive, but the computer would not recognize the external Hard Drive. I had trouble with it on multiple computers. The enclosure has worked before so I’ve been worried it might be the Hard Drive

-I tried the "Full System Restore" option with the old Hard Drive and it froze up when it was trying to reload some of the drivers. I figure it was worth a shot.

-I have a Windows 7 disk so I decided to replace the old hard drive and boot up windows from the disk and install it that way.

-1st try (Boot Logging) "“ on startup I held the F8 key and chose the "Boot Logging" option. The Windows 7 setup screen came up and I got to the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen. The only option was "Disk 0 Unallocated Space 232.9GB" and there was an error that read "Windows cannot be installed to this disk." I pressed "Next" anyway and it said something about the issue being related to a missing driver. I have no idea which driver I would be looking for and where to find it so I restarted the computer.

-2nd try (Start Windows Normally) "“ I followed the same path except I chose the "Start Windows Normally" option. This took me all the way up to the "Where do…" screen again but the error when I pressed "Next" was different. It said "Cannot use this disk. Ensure that disk’s controller is enabled in Computer’s BIOS Menu." I restarted and use either the F1 or F2 keys to access the BIOS menu (not sure which one worked). The only relevant thing I saw was Priority for deciding where to boot from (Optical Disk was 1st and Hard Drive was 2nd).

Something I thought was unusual: There was a "drive" labeled "X:BOOT" that showed up on the computer when either Hard Drive was installed. I have no idea what that is or where it’s stored on the computer.

I’m sorry for the lengthy comments, but I’m out of ideas and I need something I haven’t tried. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

Did you still have the external USB connected when X:Boot showed up.

 

Thats the part that was so weird to me. It was on the computer when I had the old Hard Drive still internally installed (with or without external USB drive connected) and now when I have the new Hard Drive internally installed (nothing to connect externally with). I have no idea what it is. I assume it is a "drive" because it has a label. It has files too. It has folders for Program Files, Users, Windows, and Sources. There are also subfolders. Never seen this before.

 

Is this a NEW HD or a USED HD?

 

Seagate Momentus 5400.6 is brand new. Bought if from Fry's. Straight out of the box into the laptop.

 

Bad HD maybe?

 

Use the Seagate DiscWizard utility to create and format the partition
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads

 

Thanks for all the help. I think I tried everything to get this thing to work and I finally gave up. I returned it and got another one. It seemed to work like it was supposed to. I still have no idea what was wrong with the other one. Thanks again.