Anyone Having Standby Problems with their SZ120?

I bought an SZ120P a weeks and a half ago from CC. Overall I like it, but I'm not sure I like it as much as I had hoped. One definate problems I've had is with putting this thing into standy mode. It usually works, but on about 5 occasions, I've gone to bring it back from standy and found that the fan was running, the power, battery, and Bluetooth lights were on, and it would not resume Windows at all. I had to hold down the power button for several seconds to force it to turn off. Anyone have a fix for this? When I reboot Windows, It comes up and wants to send the error to MS. Then a page comes up and there is no solution and that the error is from an unknown device driver. I don't see anything wrong in the device manager though.

I'm trying to decide if I should even keep at this point. If I return though, I don't know if CC would waive their 15% restocking fee which is a bit much on an expensive laptop like this...

 

I noticed this exact same issue with my sz160, not sure what the cause was.

I did a semi-restore using my revovery discs and it hasnt done it since.

 

I just got off the phone with Sony Tech Support. He hadn't heard of this issue, but he wanted to look at the video driver situtation (I'm in stamina mode. Don't remember if this issue has happened in Speed mode...) and the Intel 945GM driver was under Display Adapters twice. He. said that shouldn't be happening. I had installed the 3/1/06 BIOS update over a week ago and he thought that may have screwed it up. So, we re-installed the Intel drivers and ended up with it in there twice PLUS 2 unknown devices who's locations were on the 945GM chipset. Then, we installed the 9/21/06 BIOS. I would assume the 3/1 BIOS would superseed the 2/21 version, but he says no. Anyway, we also recovered the drivers from Vaio Recovery. Still no change. I switched over the the NVidia card and it only shows up once and there are no unknown devices. I'm going to see if I can replicate this problem with the NVidia card. Any other ideas? He says I may have to do a recovery like BlackG35 did. (what's a semi-restore though??) Does Intel have newer video drivers that will work?

 

There have been several problems reported concerning freezing/bluescreen after coming out of stand by/hibernation.

It has been suggested the hang up is due to a video driver - maybe, but I have my doubts. And I certainly don't want to spend countless hours trying to solve Sony's problem.

I retunred my first SZ160 and it happened again on my second unit! I am taking ths one back as well and waiting for the Merom chip coming out in September.

I think the SZ160 is, by far, the coolest laptop on the market at this moment (except for the squishy keyboard and askew hinges) but for $2,500 we deserve to have a bug-free machine...

 

Are you running Norton Anti Virus? This program wouldn't let my machine Standby/Restart/Shutdown without hanging. I've since uninstalled and replaced with PC-Cillin, and I've been trouble-free since. I had no idea how bad Norton was until I used this new version...

Javier

 

I haven't gotten around to installing any anti-virus yet.

 

Did you uninstall any of the bloatware yet?

 

I uninstalled a couple of things, but don't remember what they were.

 

Thats cool, as long as they werent drivers or something...Right?

 

Correct. Other than what I did today with Sony support, was install the newest BIOS.

 

Well that shouldnt have messed up anything, it should have improved stuff...

Dont know what could be the problem...Is it still occuring?

 

It's intermittent. The last time it happened was last night.

 

Ohk hmm, are you using your SZ now? When it last happened did you switch Stamina / Speed modes or how exactly did it occur?

 

Yep. I'm trying it in speed mode right now. Either all or most of the time this has heppened, I was in stamina mode. Last night, I was in bed surfing the net, then closed the lid and sat it down and went to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later to hear it's fan running and those 3 lights on as described in the first post. The only thing I had left running was OE. I usually have Firefox running too, but sometimes it causes high CPU utilization problems when coming back from standby so I closed that in case it was part of this problem.

 

I think you should start using Hibernate, Stand-By isnt good, as it continously uses battery and always stays partially on.

 

It's similar to a clean install and lets you free up 7GB of space taken up by a hidden partition on your hdd.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=44587

 

Well, the problems continue. While it was in standby, I suddenly heard Windows booting up. This is the second time it has suddenly rebooted all by itself when the lid was closed in standby. This is getting a bit ridiculous. My previous laptop (a VPR/Matrix made by Samsung that I got from BB on clearance) had almost no trouble with standby.

BTW, it was in "speed" mode this time.

If I try to return it to Circuit City, do you think they'll give me trouble about their 15% restocking fee?

 

Hmm. My SZ160 hasn't had any of these issues yet, either with hibernation or standby (unit originally would go to hibernate when the screen was closed but I recently changed that to standby). So far so good. Unit shipped with the latest BIOS and I'm still using the original OS install, however I did uninstall all trialware including Norton and the anti-spyware thing.

 

Update: I gave up and tried to return my laptop to CC. They REFUSED to take it back without paying a 15% restocking fee (over $300!). They wouldn't listen to me about the problems I was having. They suggested using hibernation all the time. Ugh. So, they did allow me to swap it out for another new one. So I'm using that now. So far so good. I haven't seen any problems yet, but I've only had it for a day. Keeping my fingers crossed! Right now, I'm trying to decide if I should do that semi-restore or just delete the junk and use what I got now.

 

Yeah, I feel your pain, Todd. I'm glad you at least got a new one, though. I initially bought an SZ110 from BestBuy, and was having a similar problem - it would freeze on shutdown and hang intermittently, right out of the box. I tried to return it, and they gave me the same noise -15% restocking fee, despite the fact that it was defective. What did I do? I drove to the next closest BestBuy, explained what was going on, and they gave me ABSOLUTELY no problem returning it. This was not the first time I've had problems with the so-called "customer service" from that BestBuy in particular. Needless to say, I'll never even step into that store again (which, if you're wondering, is the West Hollywood, California store on LaBrea Ave). I like BestBuy alot, so I'll be making all my purchases at the other store from now on.

Javier

 

Problems going into standby... drivers.
Spontaneously coming out of standby... probably a virus scanner or other such software waking the machine up for a scan.

 

Third time is the charm? Not in this case. I just returned my third SA160! The same problems with hibernation/standby have occured with each laptop. The machine(s) freezes up or a very quick blue screen appears and reboots itself.

Neither Sony tech nor I have a clue as to way this is happening. Is it me? I do not think so. I have the exact same personal software (word, photoshop, aol, etc) loaded on two other Sony computers that I own. Never a problem.

I can overlook the squishy keyboard and plastic askew hinges, but this is a problem no $2,500 computer should have.

I am now looking to the Thinkpad Z61 (core duo) which is soon to be released. It wieghs one pound more, but is a VERY well bulit, reliable machine which I happen to think is very cool looking in its all-black suit.

Of course, if Sony upgrades the SZ180's build quality and fixes this problem I may reconsider...

 

I have a Thinkpad at work and have had a fair amount of trouble with it's standy too. Funny that my old laptop almost never had a problem with it. You'd think they'd all have this stuff solved by the year 2006. Another funny thing is that I had a PSP plan on my laptop. It pretty much died less than 2 months before the end of the plan. Best Buy has had it since the begining of January. They fixed it, sent it back but didn't fix the NIC which was broken. So they sent it back again and they fixed that, but physically damaged the touchpad and the latch for the screen. Dopes! So I sent it back and this week they finally decided they couldn't get parts and junked it. I walked out of there with an $800 laptop for free and sold it to my dad. lol! At least this pays for almost half of the Vaio.

 

Are you experiencing this with a stock unit or have you installed aftermarket RAM? In other words are you adding anything to the defective units? If you're changing the RAM you might take a look there. You might also just take a look at any Windows settings you're making. If you're doing a clean install of Windows you might take a look at running a full install to eliminate that. On the other hand if you are running a full install of the software you might want to slim the install down and do a base load of the factory software. You can find details in a post in this forum. Basically, you'll just load the bare minimum of software without most of the ****ware supplied by Sony. If that still fails you might try eliminating the components that are different between the SZ and your other machines. The hard drive protection (which I deem ****ware BTW) is one example the camera is another. Just try to eliminate anything that might be different.

I returned my SZ140 and picked up a SZ150 yesterday. After configuring the SZ with all my software and Windows options I began to have random problems with hibernation. After a couple hours of back-tracking I believe I found the problem. It was one or the combination of two Windows settings that was causing the problem. I had changed the swap file to a different partition and I switched the option for Windows to give the greater share of memory to System Cache. Both settings have worked for numerous notebooks in the past, but you know Windows.

 

Anyone else experiencing this problem? I returned my original laptop and got a replacement SZ120P. For the first couple of weeks, I had no problems at all. In the past few days, the yellow/orange/blue lockup coming out of standby problem has happened twice, including this morning. And after forcing a shutuff and reboot this morning, I tried to put it into hibernation for the day and it rebooted after I closed the top. These problems are very disappointing!

 

SAME identical problem here!!
Other problem: when the system goes standby, NEVER resume: no key or combination wake it, I must shutdown the system (pressing the power button for > 4 sec).
The problem started after about 2 weeks, i removed most of the trial programs (norton antivir, ghost, Office and some others).
My workaroud: after suspend keep F2 pressed and on the BIOS screen press shutdown. The standby is disabled, i never use it.
Im looking for a solution, here is what i tried
- BIOS restore
- LAtest bios already installed (R0063NO)
- move system cache to D:
- Chage almost all the settings on the VPM
- the system is on SPEED (i never used stamina)
but nothing worked.
Some other ideas?
Thank
Gianluca

 

Just found an update to the Wireless Lan Driver... and update description says:

This program will upgrade Wireless LAN Driver to Ver.10.1.0.15. The following symptom has been resolved.
1. System may stop responding when resuming

http://www.css.ap.sony.com/VAIO/Website/General/Download.aspx?ID=51936

The site sometimes does not load... same driver can also be found on intel's website...

This "Might" be the solution...can't be sure though...

 

Good find. I'll have to try it.

BTW, on a somewhat related note, why does the WLAN light stay on most of the time when you put it into standby?

 

Because wireless keeps your notebook on, just in a temporary low-battery usage mode - Unlike hibernate.

Though the light being on is a flaw that people have been talking about around here.

 

I just hit that issue where the wifi light was on when I went into standby, I turned it on and restandy'ed it and it went away this time.

 

Well, I finally updated my driver this morning after putting it into standby and seeing it reboot. I hope this works! Thanks for the link.

 

FYI...I've had the updated WiFi drivers installed for over a week now and I have yet to have another resume from standy problem.

 

is the update compatible to the SZ120?

i noticed that in the applicable list there were no SZ120 stated but only other models of the SZ that are not in the US

 

It worked fine for me and I verified that I had the same WiFi model.

 

Todd - Mine shows up twice under Display Adapters as well when in Stamina mode. Did you ever find out what was causing this and how to resolve it before you exchanged the machine in question? I haven't experienced any standby issues as of yet, but it's mere presence and the fact it may have been related to later troubles with yours gives me a little cause for concern.

 

I think the double entry of the Intel adapter is normal. I saw the same thing on a Compaq laptop with the same integrated graphics. Like I said above, I haven't had the issues with resuming from standy since I upgraded to the latest Intel WiFi drivers and it's been almost 2 weeks. So that appears to be the thing to do.

 

Thanks, Todd. I'll assume that since I'm not having any of these issues and my 120 is realtively new that it may be because I have the latest Intel wifi drivers already. I'll stop fretting now....