My Sony VGN-FE21B laptop has been having problems with performance over the last few months, applications were taking a long time to load and the hard drive was getting cluttered with obsolete files, so at the weekend I decided to re-install Windows XP Pro onto my Sony VGN-FE21B laptop.

The original operating system was Windows XP Home but since the laptop has been bought primarily for work purposes, I had also bought a copy of Windows XP Pro but each time I install Windows XP Pro on my Sony VGN-FE21B laptop it always has a missing icon for the memory stick in My Computer. I imagine this is because the hardware is specific to Sony and not a generic Windows XP driver.

Fortunately this is really easy to solve (although I have to look it up online every time I re-install Windows XP Pro) as you can download the memory stick hotfix from Sony (When the page loads scroll down to “14. To install Memory Stick Hotfix”). Run this file and voila!

This article is mainly to help me (although I like to think it will help others) when I come to re-install Window XP Pro onto my Sony VGN-FE21B laptop in the future and will hopefully help me answer my own question.