Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I've picked up this laptop from a friend, so it's a home job, and I'm beginning to wish I'd never seen the thing. I only took it on out of pity as the guy is a penniless mature student doing a nursing degree, and well we should all help nurses shouldn't we! It's a Sony Vaio SVE1512 with a Core i5 and a single 8GB stick and originally a 750GB drive. Apparently it first started having problems at 6 months old - taking ages to boot, but instead of taking it straight back to PC world (I know, I know!) he hung onto it and it got better for a bit. It's now 14 months old (I know!) and it has developed bigger problems. The hard drive is knackered for starters, it clicks and searches and is horrifically slow but I managed to get a valid image backup off it, it took 6 hours, but it did it. I've taken a copy of the backup VHDX, taken ownership of it and I can mount it and have a look around and open all his work files so I know I'm OK there. I've put the old hard drive in a caddy and chkdsk /f /r 'd it, it took 12 hours and it had more errors than I've ever seen before so I know I wasn't imagining the hard drive fault! When he gave it to me he mentioned something about the hard drive light pulsing on the front of the laptop and it not booting. Not being familiar with the Vaio (I usually avoid them like the plague) I assumed it was directly related to the failing hard drive but I've now put a new 1TB drive in it that he had already bought with the intention of putting into a caddy to use as an external drive (it came with 750Gb) and it still won't boot. I did wonder if it was a hard drive capacity issue so I've tried a second hand 250 and it's made no difference. I've checked the ram with known good from another machine and I've also put the old hard drive in another machine and, albeit slowly, it booted that machine so I know the issue is outside the failing hard drive. With any hard drive in it - either the new 1TB, the old 750GB or the second hand 250GB - you push the power button the power light comes on, the wireless lights come on, the caps, num and scroll lock buttons flash on and the hard drive light flashes randomly for about 2 seconds. It looks like it's going to load up correctly and then it begins to pulse rythmically and the system fan spools up to about 3/4 speed and there it will sit, no screen activity. Ocasionally after 5-10 minutes sitting there it'll show the vaio bios logo and then go through to 'no os found', but I've also left it for hours at a time and nothing has happened. I'm not quite sure what to do now as I don't want to admit defeat, but I've spent hours looking through forums and no one describes the issue completely but totally random complete death appears to be quite a feature of Vaio machines. Anyone got any ideas? I'm out. I'm this close: |--| to just telling him to give me £200 in £50 installments and I'll buy him something from @ICTDirect_Dave that I know will work for more than 12 months. Gahhhh! 1
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 Have you tried upgrading the bios? Most of the time I can't even get to bios...
ICTDirect_Dave Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Sounds like the memory is shot as well mate. Pull it and run memtest on it in another device if you can. Does he store it next to his industrial-strength magnet collection by any chance? 1
3s-gtech Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Hmmmm. Is this one of those where he definitely hasn't spilled water on it, but the inside is somehow green and furry anyway? It sounds very poorly. What does it do with no HDD, booting to a live CD? 1
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 Sounds like the memory is shot as well mate. Pull it and run memtest on it in another device if you can. Does he store it next to his industrial-strength magnet collection by any chance? Change of memory doesn't help - Changing to an identical ram module gives the same error. Changing to 2x 2gb or 2x 4gb modules gives a different error - power light comes on, lock lights flash, hard drive light flashes slower, nothing else happens.
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 Hmmmm. Is this one of those where he definitely hasn't spilled water on it, but the inside is somehow green and furry anyway? It sounds very poorly. What does it do with no HDD, booting to a live CD? It's completely immaculate inside, not even dusty. Exactly the same with no HDD as with one. - you push the power button the power light comes on, the wireless lights come on, the caps, num and scroll lock buttons flash on and the hard drive light flashes randomly for about 2 seconds. Then it begins to pulse rythmically and the system fan spools up to about 3/4 speed and there it will sit, no screen activity.
ICTDirect_Dave Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Sounds like the Mobo is knackered then. You could pull it and do a home reflow (10 mins in the oven at 190 suspended on kitchen foil pillars). Worked for my macbook pro. 1
IT_Ninja Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Back to basics, do you have another memory module to try. Have you checked the BIOS settings? Test loading without hard drive then check bios with... 1
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 Back to basics, do you have another memory module to try. - Have you checked the BIOS settings? Test loading without hard drive then check bios with... Change of memory doesn't help - Changing to an identical ram module gives the same error. Changing to 2x 2gb or 2x 4gb modules gives a different error - power light comes on, lock lights flash, hard drive light flashes slower, nothing else happens. Can't access bios - just sat at a black screen Exactly the same with no HDD as with one. - you push the power button the power light comes on, the wireless lights come on, the caps, num and scroll lock buttons flash on and the hard drive light flashes randomly for about 2 seconds. Then it begins to pulse rythmically and the system fan spools up to about 3/4 speed and there it will sit, no screen activity.
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 You broke it. It was all right apart from being a little slow when you received it. Yeah but, no but... When he gave it to me he mentioned something about the hard drive light pulsing on the front of the laptop and it not booting. [/Quote] It's just doing this all the time now!
IT_Ninja Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Remove HDD and memory, test one memory module slot each. If no change then, if you can, try applying pressure to the graphics chip and boot up whilst still applying pressure. I had one with a similar issue and the mo-bo was indeed the fault. I've seen many with graphical faults that are similar. Also lol @ Galway: "whurl in the MRI scanner" - Nurses eh The defib might have shocked it back to life 1
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 Remove HDD and memory, test one memory module slot each. If no change then, if you can, try applying pressure to the graphics chip and boot up whilst still applying pressure. I had one with a similar issue and the mo-bo was indeed the fault. I've seen many with graphical faults that are similar. Also lol @ Galway: "whurl in the MRI scanner" - Nurses eh The defib might have shocked it back to life Removed HDD - same result, HDD light pulses. Removed ram module - identical module in original slot, same error, identical module in slot 2, different error, no HDD light at all, power light comes on lock lights all flash. Can't access mobo without splitting whole laptop and as the guy isn't really paying me i'm disinclined to get elbows deep in the thing! I've had 3 or 4 Vaio's through my hands in over the years, they were all dead with bewildering beep codes/faults. I wouldn't touch Sony computing with a barge pole. I'm rapidly going off their mobile phones too!
difinity Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I know Sony's can be a little picky on memory but this sounds like a BIOS issue. You'll need an external programmer though. 1
win Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 On some laptops you can update the bios by downloading it and putting the file on a USB stick. It will boot from USB and update the bios. Also, try a full power reset i.e. remove the power and battery, then hold down the power button for a few seconds - this drains it completely. 1
davethetekkie Posted October 1, 2015 Posted October 1, 2015 Does the unit have an optical drive? If you still get HDD LED activity with no drive in it is it a shot optical drive playing hell with the SATA controller maybe? Other than that +1 on the complete drain of power... just to note I had an HP a couple of years back that I did a 15 second drain with no battery and holding the power button with no success... I found a guide stating that it had to be a MINIMUM of 40 second on that model for some reason and it worked! Possible worth trying the same here... 1
IT_Ninja Posted October 1, 2015 Posted October 1, 2015 I second that, I still have a HP that takes forever to boot because of the optical drive. Removing it makes it boot normally but otherwise it takes ages. Worth a try 1
Oaktech Posted October 6, 2015 Author Posted October 6, 2015 Removing the optical drive did not fix it. I just got the guy up and running with a replacement machine from @ICTDirect_Dave. Sending it in for repair with one of our local £30 an hour gadget repair shops would have cost more than Dave wanted for another machine. 1
davethetekkie Posted October 6, 2015 Posted October 6, 2015 That's a shame... But at least you've managed to sort something! :-)
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