Advice for me - non-booting laptop

[wonko the sane]

Hello, can anyone tell me whats going on?

My 6 year old Sony Vaio has all of a sudden stopped wanting to start. I push the power key, the fan starts the lights flicker on then it all stops. Sometimes it gets a bit further and then the screen comes on for a few seconds before it all stops. Yesterday i pushed the power key for about 15 mins until it kinda "caught" and it booted up properly.

Is it the end of the line or is there some way to fix this?

Thanks

 

[mauvais]

Dying battery maybe? The biggest drain/surge on power is at boot, I imagine.

If not, it is quite old and possibly time for the bin but it might be worth getting it physically looked at by a repair specialist.

 

[Velouria]

Hello, can anyone tell me whats going on?

My 6 year old Sony Vaio has all of a sudden stopped wanting to start. I push the power key, the fan starts the lights flicker on then it all stops. Sometimes it gets a bit further and then the screen comes on for a few seconds before it all stops. Yesterday i pushed the power key for about 15 mins until it kinda "caught" and it booted up properly.

Is it the end of the line or is there some way to fix this?

Thanks

Can't help you much specifically as Sony lock up most of their technical info in a stupid 'Club Vaio' site that you need the serial number of the machine to register on (plus from what I've gathered in the past it's very scant on low level techie info - IBM in comparison after a while freely release all the hardware manuals for their laptops which is very nice of them ).

Your symptoms point to a hardware fault in the laptop but I can only speculate as to exactly what the fault is:

• Power regulator board in the laptop (and by extension, the external power supply) - can you borrow another power supply and see if the problem persists? This is unlikely if you don't get any 'power' warning lights.
• Fan failure, fan sensor failure or temperature sensor failure. I'd say this was most probable (It figures the fan isn't working/the machine is overheating so refuses to start up).
• Other internal hardware fault. Yeah I know that's pretty vague but it could be one of many things that's wrong with it

Dunno if that'll help you much

edit: Yes, could be the battery too, but I guess that ties into first suggestion (power problem).

 

[mauvais]

I don't think it'd be the fan, unless it was specifically designed not to boot if the fan was dead, which seems unlikely. It takes a long time for the machine to reach the temperature limit of about 75 degrees so it wouldn't affect boot. When my machine overheats you still get a message about it.

It could be anything at all really, but that it did work once after a period of trying suggests something wrong on power-up. My bet is it can't draw enough power in one go, but equally it could be the same problem on an individual component like the graphics adaptor.

 

[wonko the sane]

Cheers for the suggestions - my first thought was that it was something power related, rather than the fan - which does come on for a little bit, but seems to switch off a split second after the computer.

Can any recomend a repair place to go to? I havent got the first clue about it - its pretty pricey isnt it?

 

[editor]

My 6 year old Sony Vaio has all of a sudden stopped wanting to start. I push the power key, the fan starts the lights flicker on then it all stops. Sometimes it gets a bit further and then the screen comes on for a few seconds before it all stops. Yesterday i pushed the power key for about 15 mins until it kinda "caught" and it booted up properly.

Sounds like a failing component to me. Deffo try another power supply as Velouria has suggested.

I'm not sure that it would be the fan because the machine would be cold when you boot it up so the fans shouldn't be kicking in.

As for repair, I'd suggest getting a new/second hand laptop as it (sadly) rarely makes economic sense to try and patch up what is a relatively ancient laptop.

 

[wonko the sane]

Yeah, not really sure where to get hold of another power supply tho

Sucks because my dad said he would give me some cash to get a new laptop in 6 months time, so just kinda needs to work for a little bit longer (and it works really well apart fromt this problem).

Tried to get to the sony support, but they wont let me as the laptop wasnt purchased in europe or something.

 

[Velouria]

I'm not sure that it would be the fan because the machine would be cold when you boot it up so the fans shouldn't be kicking in.

Depends how it's set up, one of my servers at work failed its CPU fan because, although it was spinning, it wouldn't spin *fast enough*... Another server failed two of its six fan but there was nothing wrong with them - it was a known flaw with the fan monitoring circuit. So if the fans inside can't run at full speed anymore (ever noticed how most modern PCs blow the fan up to full speed at startup to check this?) or the machine *thinks* the fans can't run at full speed anymore, then the machine may refuse to boot.

 

[Velouria]

Yeah, not really sure where to get hold of another power supply tho

Sucks because my dad said he would give me some cash to get a new laptop in 6 months time, so just kinda needs to work for a little bit longer (and it works really well apart fromt this problem).

Tried to get to the sony support, but they wont let me as the laptop wasnt purchased in europe or something.

Ah, good old Club Vaio

In the meantime, you might want to get one of these to get the data off the hard drive. You'll get one easy enough in Tottenham Court Road if you're in London. WARNING: hook it up to the secondary IDE channel only (I made the mistake of hooking one up to the primary channel once and the PC started booting off of it and made it unusable in the laptop!). If you're unsure about how to use it - find someone who is sure, if you put the connector on the wrong way around the drive might die.

Once you get one of them hooked up, you can get any data you need that's on the drive off of it onto your main PC. Either make sure you still have a CD or DVD burner hooked up, or have plenty of space on the hard drive to copy it off...

edit to add: on that particular model (I have one in the work PC), the correct way around is with the writing on the connector on the TOP side and the drive PCB side DOWN. Make sure that pin 1 lines up with where pin 1 is on the drive. If unsure, go and learn some more stuff about drives before you plug it in

 

[wonko the sane]

Cheers for all the tips there

Found out college has a laptop surgery, where they will tell you whats wrong with your puter, but not fix it, which is a start, so will check out there