Laptop powers on but won't boot.

[matthewj]

Hi,

I have a 18 month old Sony Vaio Laptop which, last night, decided to give up the ghost.

When I power it up it turns on, I hear the hard drive come on an the fan start up. I even get a flash or two from the processor light. But then nothing the screens stay black and other than the power light, the fan and the hard drive there are no signs of life.

Any ideas would be gratefully recieved.

This is what I have tried so far.

1) Initially I thought that it was the screen but when I attach it to an external monitor the problem persits. Also if it was just the monitor and the system was booting correctly the NUM and CAPS lock lights would come up eventually, which they don't.

2)As I can hear hear the disc drive checking for discs I Inserted Vista disc in an attempt to boot from CD. No luck!

3)Removed battery, left for 20 minutes or so. I then inserted the power cable and held down power button for 1 minute. Apparantly this should initiate a hard reset, although I'm unsure if this is true or not but I thought it was worth a shot at this point.

4)Now i'm desperate. I open the beast up and check it's not been bathed by one of the kids. I also checked for any obvious signs of damage or cables having worked their way free. All seems fine.

4) Suspended it in a nice hot cup of tea! unfortunatley no finite amounts of improbaility were produced. Nor did it boot up.

Thanks for your help.

[Steve R Jones]

Does the Fn + F8 key combo do anything?

[matthewj]

Hi Steve thanks for the suggestion, no luck I'm afraid.

[BipolarBill]

It's most likely that the power cable jack is worn out or damaged. When this happens, the battery never charges and the unit won't work even when the battery is removed and power is connected.

The main clue here is that the unit powers itself off within seconds. If it does, the power jack (socket) is broken. If, on the other hand, the unit stays powered up, then the problem is more serious.

[matthewj]

Hi Bill,

Thanks, I don't think that this is the case here. If I leave the battery in and unplug the power the laptop stays on for over two hours.

I fear you may be correct and that it's something far more serious. A Fried CPU or HDD maybe?

[BipolarBill]

I was leaning more towards a defective or broken motherboard.

[matthewj]

Mmmm, do you know of any specific diagnostics I can run to verify that? If I can't even boot from disc there's not much I can do is there?

[BipolarBill]

No, but the very fact that you are not even seeing the BIOS logo when starting points towards a very low level hardware problem.

We are all averse to spending our money on things that we have not planned to spend on, but there comes a time when you must see a professional for troubleshooting. This is one of those times, I'm afraid.

[matthewj]

Thanks for all the advise.

I've got a Sony repair centre nearby so I think I'll pop it in there. The fact it's in pieces should help as they won't need to spend their time taking out the 30 odd screws that hold he thing together.