Black Screen/Disruptive Shutdowns in Repaired VGN-Z - Repairs Guaranteed?

Hallo Community,

In on to my 3rd Vaio Z, the old z505HS is STILL going strong (though it does have the famed power switch problem).

I have a VGN-Z21 running Vista which was finally repaired in late Nov2010 under guarantee. The fan would emit sporadic clicking/creaking noises. The original guarantee ran out in late Nov 2010.

During repair the fan was exchanged - and also SONY says, part of the CPU (?).

I got the machine back and found the BIOS had been reset to any older version (no virtual machine VMWare support etc.) - I do use VMWare. Updated to latest BIOS via VAIO update round about Feb. This info is for sake of completeness.

The problem is since the repair (and maybe more so since the BIOS update) I'm getting black screen/disruptive shutdowns. At first I have to say I didn't notice - e.g. the machine would be off early morning - and I figured I must have done a shutdown the night before. These were happening according to the Reliability Monitor every 3 to 4 weeks.

Unfortunately the black screens have now started to occur with increasing regularity and can now occur 1,2,3 times are day. Whether they do seems directly to depend on activity/load. I'm not a heavy user normally - and use STAMINA - Vaio Max Battery most of the time. Switching to High Performance or the SPEED mode definitely increases the likelyhood of shutdown.

Generally in STAMINA and Vaio Max Battery I don't get shutdowns even now and can leave the machine on for days. I haven't done too much experimentation on switching modes etc. because I suppose disruptive shutdowns aren't good for the machine. In fact I've now stopped using it.
Ambient temperatures have increased here since the repair from ca. 19 to 30 ish degrees centigrade.

My impression is the this fault is a result of the repair. Certainly it did not happen beforehand. Disruptive Shutdowns are a typical reaction to overheating. I installed everest - max temp at CPU is 104/105 degrees C in STAMINA and Vaio Max Battery. Either the fan is not reacting properly or the logic controlling the fan has been somehow affected - triggering shutdowns perhaps without them being necessary.

Looking at the Reliability Monitor I see that during the time this machine was in repair -they were getting up to 6 disruptive shutdowns per day! Since then, as I say, every 3 to 4 weeks until recently.

So after all of that - my questions are:
1. likelihood of repair being cause
2. whether SONY guarantees such repairs - and if so for how long

All help greatly appreciated

 

Call in!

1) try a few more things, if not, call up sony.
2) if you ran out of warranty after a Sony repair, they should give you 90 days (at least here in the USA)

 

After a long process involving Sony Customer Relations I'm pleased to say that the vaio was repaired and sony offered to pay part of this repair ( ... of the original repair).

The warranty in Europe is also only 90 days.

But if a repair leads to a problem then legally even after 90 days there is an obligation on the part of the repairer to meet any costs. The problem is that after 90 days you have to prove that this is the case.

Let's hope the vaio-z keeps going.
(I'd switch to a vpc-z but i'm not a fan of the keyboard)