15 month old SA dead....no lights, no fan, no power at all

Hi, I have a 15 month old sa. Last week it was simply sitting on a desk not being used for about an hour. When I came back over to use it again, it was off. Even though it was still plugged in, the battery charging light nor any of the other lights on the laptop were on. Pressing the power button does nothing. It certainly didn't just run out of power, the ac adapter is still working properly with a green light (on the adapter, not the laptop) and it had two full batteries when this happened (regular + sheet battery).

I tried unplugging, tried taking the batteries out and just using wall power, etc and nothing works. It is a brick, no screen power, no fan noise, no lights or sound of any kind come on.

There was no damage of any kind to the machine from liquids or physical abuse. Any help is appreciated. It has never done anything like this before although i did have to send it back to sony 3 months ago because the hard drive failed. It is an SA with a 512 gb ssd, now just a few months out of warranty unfortunately.

The only thing i can think of that might be a factor is that i was in China using a plug adapter for the charger which has us style prongs.

I paid about $3000 for this laptop so it is worth fixing if possible. Thanks.

 

There is a reset you can try, supposedly to fix a static charge buildup. It worked on my SR when it wouldn't turn on.

1. unplug AC power, remove battery.
2. press and hold power button for 30 sec.
3. put battery back in (optional: connect AC power).
4. see if it will power on.

 

Thanks for the reply. I tried this as you suggested. Unfortunately it had no effect.

 

that sucks. I fear the worst. maybe the AC charger failed and the battery ran dead. do you know anyone else with a SA that you can try their battery?

 

I don't know anyone with another battery but when i last used it (no more than 1 hour before I found it dead) the batteries (regular & sheet) were fully charged, which usually yeilds no less than 6 hours of battery life. Unless some kind power anomoly suddenly drained both batteries, they should both be near fully charged. I've tried ressurecting the vaio as you recommended with each battery individually, both together, and with only ac adapter power, all to no avail.

 

Have you tried using a different power adapter. I had a prior Vaio and turns out the brick was non-functional. Went to go buy a universal adapter and worked like a charm.

 

No I haven't tried that. The power adapter seems ok (green light comes on and it's not making any noise) and the batteries shoul be charged anyway. Even so, at this point it looks like I'll have to take it to a repair shop for diagnosis so I'll be sure and have them try a different power adapter, thanks for your help.n

 

Well, it was a defective/bad mother board according to the repair shop.

According to the shop, there was a bad run of these mother boards and it's a relatively common problem.

$600

I'll never buy another Sony laptop, and will go out of my way to never buy another Sony product at all.

Simply a crap product, seemingly almost designed to break just outside of warranty coverage. The SA is a POS, probably the worst consumer purchase I've ever made in my 30 year life.

Sony deserves all the financial problems they're having, and i can see why they're struggling when they throw out crap products like this.

I know no one cares, and the Sony fanbois will pounce on me for saying this, but I need to vent. Don't bother to reply in defense of Sony, I don't care and don't want to hear it.

 

That is the suck. And that repair shop is making bank on that mb, like 600% I wonder if you could find the mb online somewhere and swap it out yourself.

Good luck

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

Did it really die out just under daily light use?

I'm planning to buy a sony of myself and if that's the case (For college it will be multiple times turn on and off everyday) .... there's plenty of other to choose from.

Also: is it possible to buy the MoBo (i've seen people completely dissenble vaio with only mb left) from ebay or similar site? And then just replace them. Or it could be a simple transistor that manages the input power be burnt.

 

same thing happened to me with my Dell XPS. It was an expensive laptop and died a couple months out of warranty, which is why i started looking around and ended up buying a sony. =o

 

Halfway down this page my heart sank out of my chest and through the floor. Thanks for solving this for me... Could have let me down a little softer, no?

About five minutes ago I encountered EXACTLY the same symptoms. Viaio SA, 14 months old, no lights, no power, nothing. Went from reading the news to dead in a flash. Tried with slice battery, no battery, without power brick, with power brick. All the same. No response what so ever.

I logged into my account here, after a long hiatus... (My last posts having to do with installing a second hard drive in the optical bay.) While I was about to post my symptoms, and ask for possible solutions, I read through the front page threads. There, to my great disbelief, a post with a title matching exactly what I was about to describe.

So apparently, this does seem to be a rather prevalent issue, with something electronic failing around 15 months after. Genious. Out of warranty. Out of support. Bril.

If anyone has some inventive solutions, pass them up. I'm not in the states so I'm not even sure how to get a motherboard if that was possible... I don't have a fortune to spend here, so a repair place is pretty much off the table.

While I would have said yestderday that I'm completely happy with this machine, today... Not so much.

 

Well it gets worse, the motherboard they ordered as a replacement apparently won't output video and the hard drive was encrypted somehow to only work with the original (now broken) motherboard.

So the whole $3,200 Vaio SA is now a total loss, after 16 months. Maybe I can sell the blu-ray drive and hard drive. The repair shop is returning the replacement motherboard and I am paying them for their labor only. Maybe I will take my $3,200 Brick to the gun range for some stress relief with my fully automatic M14.

I travel for a living but I never left the Vaio in a checked bag; always left it in a thick padded laptop sleeve in my hand lugage when it wasn't in use. I used it everyday as my laptop is my lifeline to the world while I'm at work. I would expect any laptop to last at least 36 months under such conditions, especially one costing this amount of money. I played games on it when I had a good enough internet connection, but most of the time it was just used for internet browsing.

So I'm back to my 5 year old Sager NP2090. Funny how they can somehow make a laptop that works well for 5 years, had good performance for its time and was less expensive than the Sony.

My advice is this: Absolutely do not buy a sony Vaio if you have any choice in the matter, and if you do, make sure you get the 3 year warranty. If my experience is any indication, expect to only use it 20% of the year because the rest of the time it'll be in for a repair of some kind. Be sure to back up your hard drive as often as humanly possible.

.

 

I feel for you. I feel like a complete rube and sucker for buying Sony's overpriced crap. I won't forget it. They can go right out of business at this point and I'd be happy about it.

 

This is why I always buy an expensive item with at least a 3-4 year warranty with ADH attached. If I have that much money to spend, I would definitely spend a bit more on an extended warranty.

Every computer I've owned always had an extended warranty, and I've had to use it a couple times already and has already paid off...It also gives you a peace of mind that no matter what, you will be covered. I think that alone is worth it.

 

Sorry to hear that. Really an awful situation. I'm out less, 1400, data safe... But still unfortunate. Is there any value left if I were to try and sell it off?

 

have you tried buying a motherboard off eBay and swapping it yourself? also, i'm sure you can sell it for parts on eBay, especially the LCD, keyboard, battery, DVD/Blu-ray drive.

 

LCD/Keyboard/Battery sound easy enough to hawk. I actually already sold the blu-ray for pittance to someone through this forum.

I checked eBay, essentially two possible options - 300$, only one shipping from the US.

Sadly, for the time being all this is complicated by the fact I am not located in the US. The hassle of getting the mobo and attempting a fix.. With the possibility it would go wrong...it's a crap situation.

I can certainly try to part out what I can. Is there any guide/photos you know of to open a SA up?

 

^ there is one for VAIO SE, which is essentially just a bigger SA. [ YouTube link]

 

I had the same problem (just out of warranty). One morning it just would not switch on. Totally unresponsive. Recalling this thread, I feared the worst.
But after hitting the power button a few dozen times, it suddenly came to life, so it turns out the power button is at fault.
Until it's fixed, I keep it on standby so I can switch it on with the keyboard.

The only other big problem I've had with my SA is the fan. It sometimes seizes up, either slowing down and creating a horrendous grinding noise, causing it to shut down from insufficient cooling, or worse: shuts down seconds after boot up when the fan fails to start. The problem somehow rights itself after a few days. (The bearing is sealed so it's not really possible to lubricate it.)

 

man that sucks... got me thinking about picking up an extended warranty from squaretrade or something lol

 

I think it is a design issue if there are many case for it.
your should buy a Z, instead of SA. my sz23 is 6 years old and it is still working, my Z46 is 3.5 years old and working well except a hd replacement one month ago. I have a old fujisu is almost 9 years old and working too.
But i have a twinhead from tw repaired 5 times within 3 years warranty and finally dead like a brick, so it is not just a brand issue, product rang is important too. must buy high end product.