Sony Vaio laptop video not working or shows random characters
I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ series laptop. The video stopped working but it didn’t fail in one day, it failed gradually. The laptop was working fine for the first 14 months. One day I turned it on and the screen had some strange characters all over. I restarted the laptop right away and after that the video worked fine for a few days. Later I got same characters on the screen again but this time I couldn’t get rid of them. Finally, today my laptop video failed completely. There is no video when I turn it on. The bad thing is the laptop is not covered by the warranty anymore. Is it expensive to fix it?
This might be a known NVIDIA graphics chip failure issue. Sony knows about this problem and you have a chance to fix your laptop at no charge. This offer from Sony is valid for 4 years since the purchase date, click here for more details.
Problem description:
Distorted video, random characters or blank screen issues due to failure of the NVIDIA graphics chip.
Affected Sony Vaio laptop models:
• VGN-FZ11x, VGN-FZ18x, VGN-FZ21x, VGN-FZ31x, VGN-FZ38x
• VGN-AR11x, VGN-AR21x, VGN-AR31x
• VGN-C1Zx, VGN-C2Zx
• VGC-LM1xx, VGC-LM2xx
• VGC-LT1xx, VGC-LT2xx
May 19th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Toshiba Satellite l455d-s5976…Video is extremely choppy. Itunes HD movies will play, but unwatchable due to choppiness, however Windows Media Player plays HD video clips just fine. Laptop has Windows 7, updated drivers, ATI Catalyst Control Center. I have 3GB RAM and 256mb integrated ATI driver. Brand New laptop, I don’t understand. Shed some light, please. Thank you.
August 19th, 2010 at 1:00 am
I have a Sony Vaio laptop VGN-SZ55GN and up until recently everything was working fine(except for overheating). Then I started playing a game called Alien Swarm by Valve and after 2 critical in-game errors my computer started displaying vertical lines, 1 pixel-wide of different color, when loading Windows, and pink-ish lines of different width, when in the Windows(kind of on the background).
It happened twice, for the 1st time the screen just blacked out, froze, and I had to restart the laptop manually. Computer worked fine since then until the second accident. Same freezing. I restarted manually again. But this time there were these lines on the screen.
Not only does it affect the screen colors but also I can’t run my laptop on my Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS anymore. It doesn’t load the Windows. But when I go into Safe mode or switch to the standard VGA graphics adapter, Windows works fine, but the pinkish lines still remain. I bought my laptop in Japan. Thank you.
August 21st, 2010 at 10:46 pm
I don’t mean to flood, but I desperately need a solution to this previous post about Vaio laptop.
September 7th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
I also have a problem with my NVIDIA video card of SZ55GN Sony vaio laptop. Everytime I switch the SPEED mode ON, and turn the laptop ON, fuzzy lines with random characters appear, the windows still proceeds but with a 4-bit color and lowest resolution which is unchangeable. But when I switch to STAMINA mode, the laptop works fine and ok, it seems to me like the problem is most likely caused by video card error (NVIDIA).
Please tell me what to do or how can I fix this. Thanks!
September 21st, 2010 at 11:44 pm
I also same problem with you rafle.,
Now my SZ55GN stuck in stamina mode.I already sent email to CS Sony regarding this problem (nvidia faulty) but no answer
October 10th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
I have the same problem with a HP DV 9830 us and a Nvidia card
February 15th, 2011 at 8:20 pm
I have a Gateway 450SX4 and it displays vertical lines on the screen after a while of being on and sometimes they show right away during BIOS. I have got it to start up and I went into ‘Run’ and typed ‘dxdiag’ and then the ‘Display’ tab and it says ‘No problems found’. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
August 5th, 2011 at 6:17 am
I have the vgn-34x series dots all over screen like it needs to shave a 5 o clock shad. Also tire tread columns marks up and screen.
October 26th, 2011 at 12:10 am
My hp laptop nx9010 screen starts okay (everything fine) but after a few seconds (time interval changes), it shows weird images with different colors then goes too dim almost black. With flashlight you can still see that it is not black screen, simply dim with different lines of different colors. Thanks for great help!