Hi my client has a SVE1512C5E laptop with Win8. About a year back my client had the hard drive replaced by Sony while it was still within warranty. The drive failed again, but the machine is still within warranty.
My client wanted me to replace the drive and re-install Win8 as he says he had a bad experience with Sony the last time it was repaired.
I spoke to Sony support before carrying out the work (I expected to receive some helpful advice). However when I spoke with them they told me the Windows license was built on to the failed hard drive; and I would either need to purchase a replacement Windows license, or I would need to purchase their reinstall media for £50. I don't see why Sony would charge for the media in this situation as it still had a warranty.
I insisted to Sony support that the Windows product key was stored within the ACPI/MSDM table, but they would not acknowledge this. They would not give me any helpful advice whatsoever other than buying the same software that the machine originally came with.
I hope others in this situation find it helpful that I was able to replace the drive and find out myself how to do the reinstall:
I used a 3rd party utility to extract the key from the BIOS, then disabled UEFI, and used a Windows 8 disk with a custom ei.cfg file to re-install Windows.
Sony could have saved me a lot of hassle just by telling me this process.
