Sony VAIO laptop, S series, Windows 7 won't boot

hazel123 · 02 Oct 2018

Sounds like hardware. Does it do the same start problem/black screen with any installation (ie did you try booting a recovery disk or the original recovery disks). If so that rules out software/cloning/usb anomalies.

In my (not very great!) experience, when Motherboards go they tend to just go - rather than slowly fail. Could be the cmos or a faulty connection.

Having said that - had a Sony Vaio once that had some very restrictive firmware either in the bios or on the motherboard. It refused to boot or run when the hard drive was changed. After seeking advice from Sony I was informed that machine would only work with the exact same hard drive (ie same size same sata i) - and that proved to be the case. I bought a reconditioned sata i hard drive the same size and everything loaded fine. Prior to that I couldn't even load the manufacturer recovery disks.

So - if you haven't changed the hard drive, I'd also suggest, as above, trying to boot from a dvd - the recovery disks maybe. And see what happens.

hazel123 · 02 Oct 2018

Sometimes when you take it apart you can see a loose connection also

Some CMOS batteries aren't easy to replace - would there be welding involved in this laptop? I always tend to repair though, rather than get rid - if it's a good laptop. Unless it's the motherboard then I give up lol.

cjay2 · 04 Oct 2018

Hazel123, yes, I’ve done previously all of the things that you’ve suggested in your two posts here. I’m suspecting a hardware failure on the board at this point. I’ve tried substituting the hard drive for a working clone made last year, as well as trying to boot from a working usb bootable ‘rescue ‘ stick, that I normally use for annual cloning of the main drive.

The CMOS cell is partially covered in soft plastic (obviously welded or soldered internally to the red and black wires that emanate from one end of this CMOS-cell holder) and the wires go to a white two-conductor plug that plugs into a matching socket on the motherboard. I haven’t tried replacing that cell yet because that would mean totally disassembling the computer to access it (something that I did three years ago, when the fan first started running at high speed constantly). At that time I used compressed air to clean out the little dust that the fan and heat exchanger had accumulated.

The computer has not suffered any problems of lost clock time or date, so I don’t think the cell is the problem. It seems more likely to me to be some kind of physical hardware failure affecting the power-on self test aspect, as the computer doesn’t even make it to the first ‘Vaio ‘ screen. You press the power button, it lights up, you hear a slight attempt to access the hard drive, then it sits there on, until after 35 seconds, the fan comes on, at high speed, after which you just hold down the power button for four seconds and it shuts off.

Prior to this booting failure, it worked fine for six years, until July when I needed to do a restart at the request of my AV software. It would not reboot, and after manually pressing the power button three or four times, it booted normally. I used the computer normally for about five weeks until recently when I accidentally shut it down. It has never rebooted since, and here we are now. Let me add here that ‘working fine’ means that despite a problem with the fan always coming on in high speed mode starting one day three years ago, everything else has functioned well, including my professional audio and video editing software plus the usual internet sw.

It’s been a great computer so I intend to find a component level fix for it.

cjay2 · 04 Nov 2018

To all of the participants of this thread,

I’m currently in a situation where I can do some work on the main problem of this laptop, which is the not-booting-up issue. I have now here an eBay-purchased motherboard with the same part number, said to be 100% working, taken from a working laptop. I have NOS fan/heat-pipe assemblies to build up the new motherboard for a replacement attempt at fixing the booting issue. Plus I found an eBay-purchased CMOS cell assembly for this motherboard, that measures 2.8 volts unloaded.
I’m going to take apart the laptop and measure the in-circuit CMOS cell voltage. If it’s really low, then I’ll try putting in the ‘new’ cell and reassemble to see if that solves the boot problem. If not then I’ll try swapping in the ‘new’ motherboard setup.

i also recently eBay-found and bought a working, new-like condition laptop practically identical to mine, differing only by one letter in the product number (which usually means that it had a differently sized hard drive than mine. It has windows 10 on it and no Sony Vaio Care software. It is strictly running ten. Also it has a solid state drive of 128GB in it. It’s in mint condition, and I’ve requested the seller to tell me if there are any alterations done to the motherboard or the BIOS that might get in the way of my doing a full recovery of original Windows 7 Pro 64, using my Sony 6-DVD recovery set.

So with these two projects going on I’m hoping to get at least one working SVS13A1EGXB Sony Vaio laptop.

If I could find the schematic diagram and the motherboard parts layout drawing, then I could probably diagnose the board to a probable hardware cause of the non-booting issue. If I could get that far, I’d find a properly-equipped tech who can do component level repair of the board.

So that’s the present status. I’ll be back with results when I’ve got some.
Thanks for reading.

iko22 · 04 Nov 2018

cjay2 said:

To all of the participants of this thread,

I’m currently in a situation where I can do some work on the main problem of this laptop, which is the not-booting-up issue. I have now here an eBay-purchased motherboard with the same part number, said to be 100% working, taken from a working laptop. I have NOS fan/heat-pipe assemblies to build up the new motherboard for a replacement attempt at fixing the booting issue. Plus I found an eBay-purchased CMOS cell assembly for this motherboard, that measures 2.8 volts unloaded.
I’m going to take apart the laptop and measure the in-circuit CMOS cell voltage. If it’s really low, then I’ll try putting in the ‘new’ cell and reassemble to see if that solves the boot problem. If not then I’ll try swapping in the ‘new’ motherboard setup.

You might find video on YouTube on how to do this. Could be easier to do yourself once you have seen it done and completed by others.

cjay2 said:

i also recently eBay-found and bought a working, new-like condition laptop practically identical to mine, differing only by one letter in the product number (which usually means that it had a differently sized hard drive than mine. It has windows 10 on it and no Sony Vaio Care software. It is strictly running ten. Also it has a solid state drive of 128GB in it. It’s in mint condition, and I’ve requested the seller to tell me if there are any alterations done to the motherboard or the BIOS that might get in the way of my doing a full recovery of original Windows 7 Pro 64, using my Sony 6-DVD recovery set.

So with these two projects going on I’m hoping to get at least one working SVS13A1EGXB Sony Vaio laptop.
...

The Sony Vaio supports the legacy BIOS? Or does it support UEFI Bios? Windows 10 does not write to the BIOS in legacy BIOS.

hazel123 · 04 Nov 2018

There’s a support site for that model - it does mention a nvidia driver vulnerability. I also had an experience recently with a laptop from eBay that woukdn’t Boot - had two hard drives - one soldered to the motherboard and not showing up - so I coukdn’t wipe it. Had difficulty installing to the other one and suspected virus. Sure enough my usb stick got infected. Long story short it was an infected laptop. Now if you have changed the drive it can’t really be that unless it’s a rare bios virus - for which you would reflash the bios I think.

I had a Sony with nvidia drivers that won’t Run w10 as no support for the older video driver. Not sure why the link says access denied ! It’s just to the Sony website.

Access Denied

hazel123 · 04 Nov 2018

I have just been back over this thread. The problems started when your av asked you to reboot. That suggests it had found a suspect file and removed it. So I do think virus may be an issue somehow. Also I had a false positive with Kaspersky once and what it removed was a windows file and borked the install. Had to do a clean install.

As it runs fine when on and as it’s a Sony and the have their foibles I am wondering if something has been missed. Firstly VAIO care is buggy - especially in its later incarnations. I removed it. VAIO update is buggy too although it is a useful way of updating the bios so I uninstalled it after bios updated.

I know you’ve gone further with the hardware now but I am still thinking - Sony firmware and hard drive compatibility. If you have all your files backed up I would be tempted to fully wipe the original hard drive then put it back and trying to boot a windows 7 disc and see if you can do a clean install. Ie see if it will boot then. Before doing that reset the bios to original settings which I think are 1 dvd drive 2 hard drive.

This will replace your mbr and give a clean windows install without all the VAIO extras. Windows should find all the drivers needed and Sony have drivers for download as well if there was a particular Sony driver you needed.

Have had many many issues with Sony firmware and hard drives - and not booting.

iko22 · 04 Nov 2018

hazel123 said:

I know you’ve gone further with the hardware now but I am still thinking - Sony firmware and hard drive compatibility. If you have all your files backed up I would be tempted to fully wipe the original hard drive then put it back and trying to boot a windows 7 disc and see if you can do a clean install. Ie see if it will boot then. Before doing that reset the bios to original settings which I think are 1 dvd drive 2 hard drive.

This will replace your mbr and give a clean windows install without all the VAIO extras. Windows should find all the drivers needed and Sony have drivers for download as well if there was a particular Sony driver you needed.

The OP has already tried booting from Sony Recovery Disks and Acronis Rescue USB. He said that these were working last year, but now this year he cannot boot from either media. So I don't think this problem is to do with the mbr.

Megahertz07 · 04 Nov 2018

- 2.8V is a bad battery. As I wrote before, it's probably a CR2032 (3V) with a soldered wire and connector.
- So now you have two options: A MB to fix your laptop and a similar laptop with Win 10 and a 128G SSD.

If you replace the SSD with your HDD it should work.

What I've done is to replace the ODD (CD / DVD) drive with a HDD caddy. Then you'll have a SSD for Windows and programs and a HDD for data. Boots in 20 sec, opens programs at a blink of an eye.

aviarad · 05 Nov 2018

have you tried removing your battery. and boot with just your AC adapter connected? could be your battery is dying.