Big Problem with Laptop

[scoobydog]

Howdy

I have this old Sony Vaio laptop. Maybe 8 yrs old. very slow by today's standards.

Now it was working running windows XP. I have not even used it for a long time but it was working slowly until now.

Just for the exercise I tried loading windows 7 into it, dumb but yes. It didn't like that.

Now when I try to turn it on it has power lights in front but when you hit the start button nothing happens.

I have a restore disk but it is in the drive. Is there anyway of getting it to start so it can read the restore disk?

All this must sound kind of stupid but I am really not that worried about it, but now I am thinking of giving it to someone so I wouldn't mind getting it going.

Thanks

 

[dsk04]

windows key + R, then type the driver letter, or try safe mode

 

[scoobydog]

Hey

When I hit the on off button nothing happens, no boot up text, nothing. How can I do either of yor suggestions without some sort of lights from the screen

 

[scoobydog]

What about I make some USB boot thing. Could that work?

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Hi Scoobydog: Sony is in the twilight zone ... (the Win7 installation didn't complete and the XP boot record is probably overwritten).

Can you open the dvd tray manually? Use a paper clip to release the drive latch. Place the bootdisk there and restart.

Paul

 

[dsk04]

ok your cd is booting instead of the hard drive?.... there should be an option to change boot drive on startup f10, esc, ect...

 

[scoobydog]

Hey.

Na cant seem to get the dvd drive latch. Gap to small. Boot USB? na that probably wouldnt work anyway as it would have to be set up in the boot sequence in bios. I think I may be screwed on this one.

And unfortunately nothing is booting not even the CD drive. Nice thought though

Thanks

 

[scoobydog]

what would they do at a PC repair shop?

 

[dsk04]

well i just had a memeroy issue with my hp, try swapping around the memory it would not boot xp or the win 7 cd/pe it said the one file was corrupted try to replace it and got the same error / black screen

 

[scoobydog]

I cant believe it. I pulled out the ram module from the bottom, pulled out the battery. (cant see that the battery having anything to do with it as it is on mains) put them back in and hit the go button.

It has booted straight into the recovery disk which was stuck in the DVD drive and is going through the recovery process now.

I am amazed. I thought it was dead for sure.

What happened?

Thanks

 

[dsk04]

probably some kind of discofrukuration, i had to pull the battery out of mine also, one of my memory modules died, the screen had blue lines in it and all sorts of mun go, glad you got it working...

 

[scoobydog]

False alarm it has stopped working again. I cant Believe it. It looked so promising

Whilst it was going through its recovery process with the recovery disk the screen was flickering a bit here and there. Untill those flickers turned into periods of darkness.

It did a software reinstall off recovery disk and at the end the screen was almost black but when I looked closely u could see the outline of the software completed dialog box inside.

I think I then tried to shut it down but just ended up pulling the plug. After hat I tried to restart it but it's dead like before.

Any ideas. Should I throw it in the bin?

Thanks

 

[dsk04]

its got to be the memory...

funny for you have problems with the screen being to dark i just got my dell back having the same problem, they replaced the motherboard

pull the battery again and if you have more the one memory module check them by putting them in and starting one by one

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Did you have the power cord plugged-in (to prevent interruptions by an exhausted battery) while in recovery mode?

Paul

 

[scoobydog]

Power was plugged in. Appeared to finish restore. Then it wanted to do software restore. Was doing that started flickering then went black.

 

[PaulSoebekti]

Repeat pulling off the battery, and reboot.

Is the dvd - Sony's recovery disk, or is it one you made when Viao was new?
Is reinstalling XP a possibility?

The windows dvd can serve as a boot disk, have you tried this route?

Paul

 

[scoobydog]

Howdy

This is what happens. Laptop connected to mains power-no life. I then disconnect battery and then click it back in again.

Laptop starts, starts recovery process (Vaio recovery disk in drive). All seems to progress well for a little while.

Next screen starts flickering randomly. Eventually screen goes black. No response

Any Ideas

Thanks

 

[writhziden]

Sounds like your BIOS may be corrupted, although it could be a memory issue, as well. Based on what you have done, my bet is the BIOS. Do the following:

1. Shut down and turn off the computer.
2. Unplug the computer from the wall or surge protector then remove the battery.
3. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds to clear the software connections between the BIOS and hardware and clear any corruption in the temporary memory.
4. Plug the battery back into the laptop and then plug the computer back into the wall.
5. Turn it on to reinitialize the software connections between the BIOS and hardware
6. Go into your BIOS and load default settings to clear the CMOS memory.
7. Save Settings and exit the BIOS.
8. repeat steps 1-5 to reinitialize the now reset BIOS with hardware.

Let us know if this does the trick for allowing you to run your recovery.

Edit: If the above does not work, I think the issue is with your CMOS battery. An 8 year old CMOS battery is right on the edge of their lifespan. If the CMOS battery is dying, you will see many boot issues due to the memory containing the BIOS becoming easily corrupted.

As I said before, this sounds like it may be a memory issue, but the memory issue that seems most likely is the CMOS memory.

 

[dsk04]

same problem i had it was one of the memory sticks, how much memory do you have

 

[Petey7]

A corrupted BIOS sounds likely. Another possiblility, and what happened to my brothers laptop (also a sony, 8-10 years old) that displayed similar symptoms, was a failing motherboard.