Page last updated: April 30th, 2025
Restore your computer with the original software
If you want to fully restore your Sony Vaio UX computer to its original settings, you’ll need a recovery disc. This will install all the original programs from Sony, such as handy applications, utilities and drivers, and it will install the Windows operating system. Basically, it will make your computer work like when it was brand new.
Vaio computers rely heavily on the Sony software. This software is often required to use the touchscreen, use dedicated buttons on the device and also offers better support for enjoying multimedia. This makes it worthwhile to have the original programs installed. On this page, you’ll find the steps required to use and -if needed- make your own recovery disk, and restore your own computer back to its original state.
How does it work?
The steps required to restore your computer to original software depend on if you currently have the recovery disk.
The recovery disk is a set of CD or DVD disks that are usually labelled ‘system recovery’ or similar.
If you already have the recovery disk(s)
Great! If you have the recovery disk(s), you can use them in the following way:
- Connect an external CD/DVD drive to the computer. This can be a USB or FireWire drive (FireWire is also known as 1394, i-link)
- Start up your computer
- Insert the first disk in the drive
- Restart the computer. It should ask to press a key to start from CD or DVD
- If it doesn’t ask this, press F2 when the VAIO logo appears. You will now enter the BIOS.
- In the BIOS, make sure the CD/DVD drive is selected as first startup drive, and try again.
If you don’t have the recovery disk(s)
If you don’t have the recovery disk(s), things are a bit more difficult, but there are still options available!
Not all Vaio UX computers came with them in the box, or they may not have been included by a previous seller.
First, check if you have the VAIO Recovery program in the Start menu. It may be located in a ‘Sony’ or ‘Utilities’ folder.
If you have the VAIO Recovery program
Great! If you currently have the VAIO Recovery program on your computer, you can try to run it and follow the steps to create the recovery disk(s) yourself. You will need up to 2 blank DVDs and a USB / Firewire DVD burner.
If you have successfully created the recovery disks, follow these steps to use them:
- Connect an external DVD drive to the computer. This can be a USB or FireWire drive (FireWire is also known as 1394, i-link)
- Start up the computer
- Insert the first disk in the drive
- Restart the computer. It should ask to press a key to start from CD or DVD
- If it doesn’t ask this, press F2 when the VAIO logo appears. You will now enter the BIOS.
- In the BIOS, make sure the CD/DVD drive is selected as first startup drive, and try again.
If you don’t have the VAIO recovery program, or it fails with an error message
If you don’t have the VAIO recovery program anymore, or if it fails with an error message, you’ll have to download a recovery disk instead. This can happen if the internal recovery partition (which is used by VAIO Recovery) gets damaged or removed, such as when replacing the hard drive with an SSD, or having reinstalled Windows yourself.
Downloads of recovery disks are unfortunately not available for all computer models, so please check if you computer is supported (below) before erasing any software from it.
Download a recovery disk
Before downloading a recovery disk, it is good to understand that the disks used to be sold by Sony, not downloaded from their website. But as of today, Sony doesn’t sell recovery disks anymore, so we have to rely on other people distributing them online.
As for the legal aspects, this remains a bit of a grey area. One could say this software is still under copyright, but since the disks haven’t been sold for years and will not be, one could also say they’re considered abandonware. That is software that has no value anymore for the company that once sold it. Therefore, sharing these disks online is probably fine. Especially given the fact that all VAIO UX computers are now more than 10 years old and all software is already out of support by both Sony and Microsoft.
Source: The Internet Archive
There are not many websites that offer the recovery disks, but as of late 2020, some VAIO UX users have started uploading recovery disks images to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a place where old software, websites, books and music are collected and preserved. And best of all, the Internet Archive does not offer annoying advertisements, or hide downloads behind a subscription or member login.
This means there is finally a way to download them from a reliable source. There are not yet recovery disks for all VAIO UX models, so you’ll have to check below if there is one available for your model.
A note about compatibility
Recovery disks are most times usable for a series of computers rather than only one specific model (e.g. VGN-UX100 series works with UX-180N, VGN-UX200 series with 230N and 280N, etc.). This improves the chance that a disk is available for your model of computer.
Using a downloaded recovery disk
If you’ve downloaded a recovery disk, you’ll have to burn all .iso files to disks using a CD / DVD burning program. Search online for BurnAware or CdBurnerXP. Then you can follow the following steps to use the burned disks:
- Connect an external DVD drive to the computer. This can be USB or FireWire (1394, i-link) based
- Start up the computer
- Insert the first disk in the drive
- Restart the computer, it should ask to press a key to start from CD or DVD
- If it doesn’t, press F2 when the VAIO logo appears. You will now enter the BIOS.
- In the BIOS, make sure the CD/DVD drive is selected as first startup drive, and try again.
Download recovery disks for your computer model
Scroll down to download a recovery disk for your computer model (if available).
VGN-UX50, VGN-UX90S, VGN-UX90SSD, VGN-UX91, VGN-UX92, VGN-UX92SSD (Japanese models)
For the VGN-UX90S, a recovery disk is available for download:
For the VGN-UX92, a recovery partition image is now available for download:
Unfortunately, for other Japanese UX models, no recovery disk for your computer is available to download (yet)
VGN-UX180P (XP and 512MB RAM)
VGN-UX230P and VGN-UX280P (XP and 1GB RAM)
VGN-UX380N and VGN-UX390N (Vista)
VGN-UX490N (Vista and Core 2 solo)
Unfortunately, no recovery disk for your computer model is available on the Internet Archive (yet)
VGN-UX1XN (European model with Vista)
No disk for this exact model is available on the Internet Archive, but you can try the disk for VGN-UX380N and VGN-UX390N. I’m not sure if this works.
VGN-UX17GP and VGN-UX17TP (Australian / Taiwanese models with XP and 512 MB RAM)
No disk for this exact model is available on the Internet Archive, but you can try the disk for VGN-UX180P. I’m not sure if this works.
VGN-UX27TN and VGN-UX27GN (Taiwanese / Australian models with Vista)
No disk for this exact model is available on the Internet Archive, but you can try the disk for VGN-UX380N and VGN-UX390N. I’m not sure if this works.
VGN-UX38GN (Singapore model with Vista)
No disk for this exact model is available on the Internet Archive, but you can try the disk for the VGN-UX390N and VGN-UX390N. I’m not sure if this works.
VGN-UX58GN (Singapore model with Vista and Core 2 Solo)
A back-up of the internal hard drive of this computer is available on the Internet Archive. You can restore this using Norton Ghost. It is untested if this copy of Windows will stay activated, since it may have someone else’s license information in it.
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