This is all quite interesting. Thank you. This morning, I called Sony's helpline and quickly learnt that as my product is out of warranty, I'd have to pay 35p per minute to speak to someone about it. Sadly, I can't make premium rate calls from work (quite rightly too) - How dare Sony think it's Ok to charge people that sort of money to call them up for help or advice, especially when it's to do with their own sub-standard products that I'm calling them about in the first place?! Honestly...

So, anyway, in an attempt to avoid convalescing from open-wallet surgery for the next three months (remember:- Sony already had £1350 from me two year's ago), I instead called their UK Head Office who put me straight through to the customer support team and, in doing so, I saved about £10 as I was on the phone to them for quite some time. I ended up talking to some French bloke who listened to my problem. At least, I think he was French. I explained, as best as I could, that the problem seemed to be a 'known fault' and I wanted it "sorted" as there were lots of people on the Sony Vaio Forums with exactly the same issue and my friend 'TrollJester' had confirmed it was serious Sony-dodginess at play. He put me on hold for a while and then came back and then eventually, after taking my details, decided it was a 'software problem' that I was having.

I tried to argue a little and insisted this was going to be something that a little bit of Windows Vista jiggling wasn't going to sort. However, he insisted that he knew best. He's calling me back tomorrow between 10am and midday to go through it with me over the phone (I couldn't do it this morning as I was at work and didn't have the wretched PC in front of me). I'm not at all convinced his input will do much; the software has been reinstalled about 5 times now, and if he calls me tomorrow and even mentions "press the F10 key..." I'll swear at him down the phone.