My Sony Vaio notebook refuses to turn on for no reason at all but after some it comes back alive
I have had a Sony Vaio notebook, for about 3 years. Recently, it just refuses to turn on for no reason at all. I mean, the power button does not work, and nothing starts. Just when I was about to give up (3 months later) and tried one last time on the power button, it turned back on! After a couple of months of working fine, it died again. A couple of months later, it came back alive again! I did absolutely nothing to it. It never dies when I am using it – only when the laptop is shut off, and the next time I try to turn it on, it does not respond. The only clue that I have is that windows takes a long time to load (but that may just be the many programs I have installed on it). I tried cleaning the fan, but no use. The battery is not the greatest, but it does not run even with the battery removed. It does not seem to be overheated because the processor does not even get any power to it. After 2 repair shops, nobody seem to be able to tell me what the problem is. I would greatly appreciate it if you could help! Thanks!
It’s very hard to troubleshoot a laptop with a problem like yours. An intermittent problem is the worst!
I would recommend unplugging the battery, wait for couple minutes and then try to start the laptop using just AC power, but it looks like you’ve already tried it. I had a Sony laptop before and got the same problem 2 times. I was able to get my laptop back to live by removing the battery and starting it from the AC adapter.
I think it’s possible you’re your AC adapter might have an intermittent problem.
It also might be a loose connection somewhere on the system board. If I would get this laptop for repair, I would open it up and reseat all connections on the motherboard. I would try to strip it down to minimize the system and leave just the system board, the memory and the CPU and try to turn it on with an external monitor attached. If the system still doesn’t work even when it’s stripped down, I would suspect that the motherboard is bad. I know that’s not a lot of help, but that’s what I would try to do.
December 28th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
Hello,
I have a problem with my dell inspiron 9200. FIrst my notebook was dead… Then I charged the battery with an other 9200 and tried the battery in my notebook. On battery power he works fine but don’t charge and don’t work with the adapter. Adapter is fine, power socket is fine. I tried to power up my pc with only the mainboard, memory and proc but that doesn’t work either. Can someone help me?
kind regards,
Sven Vantieghem
December 28th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
I’ve got a newer VAIO laptop that loves to ruin my grades.
I bought a VGN-FS630 laptop in September of ’05, thinking Sony was a reputable brand so it would be fairly reliable. During the last week of my Spring semester, the laptop developed a problem in which it would not fully boot up, and eventually made a whirring noise from the hard-drive. This was fixed under warranty by replacing both the system board and the hard drive.
About 7 months later, again in the last week of my semester, the laptop completely shut off while I was working on my last programming project. Trying to turn it back on is a worthless effort — it does nothing. No LEDs light up, fan doesn’t turn on, screen remains in the dead state, etc. This time, however, I’m out of warranty, and Sony’s repair rates are absurd.
I’ve tested the memory, battery, and AC adapter — all of which are fine. I’ve disassembled the entire unit and reseated every connection, but to no avail. I’m assuming this is power related so possibly a broken power connector? Something I don’t know how to replace…
Any advice would be well appreciated, thanks!
December 28th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Dell Inspiron 1100 power problem
We took a lignting strike at our home. The 1100 power supply was fried. The laptop will function ok on batteries but will not work with the power supply. I have determined that the power supply is bad and used a “known” good power supply in an attempt to power up the computer. When the good supply was plugged into the computer it popped the breaker in the power strip. I am thinking that the power supply “connector” on the motherboard is at the root of the problem. The connectors are avaliable for purchase but just want a second or third opinion. As stated the laptop functions well on a “charged” battery alone. But I can no longer charge the batteries until i solve this problem.
December 27th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Hi,
I own a DELL Inspiron 5150, Intel Pentium 4 2.66,
512MB Ram, Win XP PRO SP2, DVD/CD RW. Out of no where
the laptop freezes; the fan starts running at like 200% (sounds louder than my 300hp car engine…lol),
So now, the situation is it turns on when I press ther power button; go’s into the same full power mode, then shuts down after about 10 seconds or so. What I notice is the “Num Lock” key light flashing.
Thats the situtation; I understand I may never hear from you given your availability, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could. Thanks a million!
December 24th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
ok. i have a power problem with my laptop and i will appreciate any help i can get. What happens is the laptop will not run while the power cord and the batter are both connected. the only way it will work is if the battery is out (adapter only). this is a brand new battery. and computer turns off if battery is snapped in.
any ideas, please help.
eamartens@mail.neit.edu
December 9th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
i have a sony vaio laptop (relatively new) that keeps going to a blank screen (white) randomly. if i was watching a video, the audio will continue to play, but all i see is a big white screen. if i press the power button to make it hibernate, and then bring it back up, it will be fine. could there be something wrong with the graphics card?
December 3rd, 2006 at 12:08 am
Siarek,
Try running the laptop without the battery installed. Remove the battery and start it from the AC adapter. Does it shut down by itself? Most likely just a bad AC adapter.
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:15 am
Help needed!
My Compaq R3306 sometimes acts like there was no AC plugged, but it still is. Both the DC Jack and AC adapter seem to be ok (I checked it). It happens suddenly. The icon changes from a plug into a battery. Reconnecting the plug makes the battery charge for only a couple of seconds, and then laptop again detects no AC power supply. Returning to normalilty takes a lot of effort, reconnecting the plug and hours of waiting.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Hi,
Can you help:HP pavilion ze4111s
I recently had a replacement dc jack well power lead first of all when i got it back from the repair centre and powered it on it was fine for about 3 power ons then on approx the 4th power on all i got was the blue lights flashing and the fan power on then as the fan was powering up and down the lights were flashing in time with the power down,i then returned it to the shop who then replaced the lead with a dc jack(proper) and still it does the same,now if i leave it at eventually the lights will stop flashing the fan will stay on and all the while i get no display,then the fan will shut off but the power will stay on,i have noticed that it doesnt only power on with the power button on this particular laptop there are 4-5 buttons to the right of the power button now if i press any of these it powers the laptop on too,any ideas will be greatful,thanks.
November 17th, 2006 at 2:50 am
And look at Sony’s very reassuring response to a repair case!!!
“It is important to note, however, that a diagnosis outside the warranty contract is always chargeable. If no problem is found, if your VAIO is out of warranty, or if physical damage or liquid spillage is found, the minimum cost for getting the VAIO back without any part being replaced is GB£107.72/157.87 Euro. Please understand that we cannot send a repair estimate for out of warranty cases before the VAIO has been diagnosed at our repair centre and we know for sure which parts need to be exchanged. Make sure that you have a backup of your personal data on the VAIO, as we cannot guarantee any data that is on your hard drive. We thank you for your understanding in this matter.”
I particularly love the very last sentence.
November 17th, 2006 at 2:45 am
Back to square one…
My laptop is seemingly dying a painful death. My laptop refused to work again yesterday! And the more I seem to try and fix it myself, the more damage I’ve done. The screen had developed a white line across it, as mentioned in my earlier post, and I seem to have a problem getting the keyboard working now. And this has all transpired from the alleged power problem.
Basically, I’m testing out the motherboard and any power faults; I’ve taken the motherboard out and removed the processor. This seems to work OK from the AC adapter. However, it occasionally powers up the motherboard and the battery LED comes on. When it does, that’s when it decides to switch itself off from time to time. When it doesn’t come on, it seems fine but I left it for 30 minutes at one point and then it had turned off when I went back to check it.
I spent hours last night trying to troubleshoot it and I’m beginning to think it’s a motherboard problem. I dread to think how much Sony would charge to fix all this… I’m either going to send it back and get them to sort out the issues above, or I’m just tempted to buy another one. And Christmas is just around the corner! Bah, humbug!!!
P.S. I did think that putting the laptop in the freezer wouldn’t be such a good idea…
November 16th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Phil,
I’m not sure if it will fix the problem, but I’m pretty sure that you can completely damage the screen. I wouldn’t try it unless you are ready to sacrifice the screen. What kind of line do you have? Is it very wide? If you hook up an external monitor, will it appear on the external video?
November 16th, 2006 at 1:23 am
Well guess what, I managed to figure out the problem last night! I took EVERYTHING out and powered up the motherboard… felt something roasting my leg alive… the processor. I then reattached the fan recepticle thing and then the power was maintained without any issues. So it looks as though the connection was a bit loose on the fan, therefore not cooling the processor down (although I had previously removed and reattached the fan, most likely without success).
My remaining problem is the white line across the screen. I have heard that if you put the screen in the freezer for a day or so it can fix the problem. I daren’t try it… I did give the screen connection cable a good look but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary (not to mention that I’m not sure what to look for here). Maybe it’s within the screen itself?
November 15th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Phil
Probably you still have a loose cable or a loose component. Did you reseat the memory module, have you tried reseating the CPU? What if you disconnect the screen cable from the motherboard and try starting the laptop with an external monitor? Recently I repaired a Compaq laptop and it didn’t start at all because it had a loose video cable connection on the LCD screen.
How did you get that? If you disconnected the video cable from the motherboard, check out the connector on the board. May be it has a bent pin inside. Just a guess.
November 15th, 2006 at 4:03 am
Wow, lots of problems with the Sony Vaio range. I have a Sony Vaio that my girlfriend dropped on the floor. We’re still together. But get ready for this…
It switched off after she dropped it on the floor. Came to boot it back up and it was stuck on the “Loading Your Personal Setting” Windows XP screen. In the end, I formatted it and it seemed to work OK for a few days. Then all of a sudden, it just randomly switched itself off. This is definitely a problem with power, because it doesn’t Hibernate or anything like that, it just goes “poof” (and this is with both the battery and adapter). The annoying thing is, when I switch the laptop on, after 2 seconds, it switches itself off again… or more likely, it has lost power.
After many hours of screwing (with screws) and reseating the components in the motherboard, it was OK again for a good couple of weeks. Then it started to happen again. I boot up and it just switches itself off again. When I was fiddling around inside the laptop, I did manage to damage the screen (white line going across it), so do be wary of meddling with your laptop! Anyway, I haven’t been able to boot it up now for about 2-3 weeks and it’s really getting me down.
I’ve logged a case with Sony’s amazingly slow e-support without any response. I really don’t want to fork out several hundred pounds unless I have to. Any thoughts?
October 26th, 2006 at 7:55 am
David,
I would probably try reseating the DVD drive. Remove it from the notebook and install it back. I’m not sure if you can easily remove the drive in this model, I’m not familiar with Sony notebooks. The connection between the optical drive and the motherboard might get oxidized overtime and reseating the drive can fix it. It’s something that you can try without taking the notebook to a repair shop.
October 25th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it in both regular Windows mode and in Safe Mode, but the Run box did not appear when I pressed the Windows key and the R key.
In Safe Mode, I navigated to the C:\windows\system32\restore directory and found rstrui.exe. There was no file named Restore, and rstrui.exe wouldn’t run in character mode.
I need to find a way to get the laptop to read from the CD drive. It may take a hardware technician to help with that.
If anything comes to my mind, please make another suggestion.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
David,
, press the Windows key (key with Windows logo on it) and R key at the same time. The Run box should appear. Type restore and press OK. A new window with a few files should appear. Click on rstrui.exe to start System Restore utility.
Not sure if it’s going to work but you can try. When the laptop boots up to the wallpaper
Try reverting to the point when your laptop worked fine. It might work, might not.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
My Sony Vaio laptop has quit booting into Windows XP (Home Ed). The error message says the Explorer.exe has not initialized correctly. It appears that Explorer.exe is corrupted. In Windows and in Safe Mode, I get no task bar and no icons, but the screen background.
The laptop has a hard drive and a CD/DVD drive, no floppy. It ignores any CD in that drive at boot-up. I have tried some utilities as well as the Sony Recovery CD set, but it insists on booting from the hard drive.
I have read that one may fix may be to copy a fresh version of Explorer.exe, but I don’t have access to one without being able to read the CD/DVD drive. I’m ready to restore the laptop to the factory state, but I can’t get that to work either.
BIOS settings have been reset to the default. Optical drive is frist in the boot order list.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
October 25th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Hi! I had exactly the same problem with a brand new Sony Vaio notebook (a PGC-FRV37) back in January 2004. It was after I put it to hibernate and it came back to life exactly 3 weeks later. In the meantime, I called Tech Service at Sony but they had no knowledge of anything similar and told me to send it for service. Since then, it never happened again. I just disabled hibernation and never (ever) used it. I assume there’s a problem with the state the computer is left when put to hibernate. Anyway, I’m quite curious about the fact that it comes back to life after some (quite long) time. If anyone can throw any light on that, I’ll be pleased. Cheers!
October 15th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
Laura,
Can you provide more information? The laptop turns off before the OS starts loading? Do you get any error message on the screen or any beeps on start up?
Remove the battery and unplug the AC adapter. Wait for 2-3 minutes and turn on the laptop without the battery installed, just using the AC adapter power. Does it help?
October 15th, 2006 at 8:34 am
hi
i was recently playing on THE SIMS p.c game when my laptop went into hibernate mode. Now it will turn on but go straight off in the next 5 seconds. Please help me ive tried holding the power button and the battery
October 11th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Johan,
Check the brightness settings in the power options or power saver utility that you can find in the control panel. I don’t know the correct name of this utility for Compaq laptops, but in Toshiba laptops it’s called Power Saver. I think that screen brightness could be set to a lower level when the laptop runs on AC power. Turn it all the way up and your problem should be fixed.
October 9th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
I got a problem with my compaq presario R300, when plug the AC power the brightness turns down a bit, and when i unplug tha ac power the brightness turns up as normal…Ok, Thankz
September 17th, 2006 at 8:10 am
That didn’t work
its an Acer travelmate? After I bought it I was told how rubbish they’re supposed to be!
September 17th, 2006 at 8:06 am
I have an Acer Laptop with EXACTLY the same problem, (2 days before I have to hand in an overdue piece of work, sods law!).
I was in the Library running it on battery, the battery got low, so I plugged it into the wall. I went to turn it on when I got home and nothing.
So I unplug the battery block (is block the right word?)
and just plug in the mains adapter?
thanks
September 5th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Richard,
There shouldn’t be any problem waking up the laptop from the hibernation mode. You just turn it on and it should boot to the state where you were when you hibernated the laptop. What do you experience? The laptop will not boot at all?
September 5th, 2006 at 7:37 am
I have a Toshiba Satellite A105 laptop computer. My Daughter was using this laptop and set it on hibernation mode. I did not get any book on this and was wondering could you tell me how to take it out of hibernation mode? My Wife already tried holding down the power button, and it did not come out of hibernating mode that way. Thanks Richard.
August 15th, 2006 at 2:21 am
hello.
i’m having the opposite problem. my laptop refuses to shut down. i cant restart eithier and the only way it shuts down is if i pull the battery out which isn’t healthy. any suggestions???
thanks
July 13th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Hello,
I am having the same problem. I turn off my laptop at night and nect morning it will not start. Sometioms if I slap on the keyboard it starts running fine. It’s an Acer Aspire 3000 laptop. I checked ram, HDD all fine.
Did you find any soecific reason for this problem ?