Sony Vaio PCG-V505BX What partitions needed to use Recovery cd/dvd?

I have a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BX laptop that is not bootable. (OS not
found) I believe a virus destroyed the MBR.
I tried running the Recovery DVD but recieved an error about not being
able to access the hard drive. (This makes sense, as the MBR might be
trashed.)

I read a previous discussion that mentioned the recovery dvd from Sony
could be used to install the OS/Drivers. (The hidden partition is not
actually needed). The discussion mentioned that Sony's recovery setup
just required 2 partitions- the first, about 5 gigs and the second,
however large you want it to be.

I wiped my MBR using Slackware and created the above partitions... but
I am not sure what Type the first partition (acting as the 'hidden'
partition) should be set as. Does anyone know? Is it just a different
format, DOS, FAT16, etc?

I have the Recovery DVD, and it currently boots into the recovery
process but eventually fails.

If anyone has any information on how to manually create the partitions
needed for the Recovery DVD to continue, I would be very greateful.

Regards,
Charles

 

I ran fdisk in Slackware's setup and deleted the partitions I had
created before.
I then ran cfdisk and somehow, it seems the origional partitions are
shown- the hidden partition is listed as type "Compaq Diagnostics" and
there is a NTFS 15G partition (bootable) along with a 19G NTFS
partition.

I hopefully ran the Recovery DVD, which loaded a blue background with
cursor for a long time.
Eventually a error window popped up:
"VAIO recovery wizard"
"cannot access recovery partition"
[clicking ok restarts the computer]

Any help would be appreciated.

 

There's help at http://pub173.ezboard.com/bunofficialsony .

Q