Broken SO-DIMM slot on FE21B

Hi there!

Other day my old Sony Vaio (VGN-FE21B) died. Precisely the RAM SO-DIMM slots (banks) stopped working. One died last week and other a year ago. I'm not sure if the slots are broken or just soldered joints between slots and motherboard.

Symptoms are blank screen and LED’s for caps-lock, scroll-lock and num-lock are lit. Memory itself is 100% operational as it has been tested in another laptop.

Any ideas about repairing these slots?

Thanks!

 

Unless you plaid with them, I don't see how they can break all of a sudden. Most likely solder joints, no guarantee though that it is the slot itself and not the MB somewhere on the way.

Not much you can do - take the MB out, have a closer look and with some luck you might find the problem and may re-solder it. But the chances are rather bad

 

Thanks for a quick reply. I'm very suspicious about solder joints because I was able to boot into Ubuntu after I pressed on the slot itself. But it crashed soon after I moved the laptop.

Unfortunately, I don't have any decent soldering iron right now, so it will have to wait.

 

I have had a similar problem with the MB of my previous notebook. It wasn't the RAM though, but I found that whenever the MB is pressed down at one of the corners - everything worked fine. As soon as you release it - it would freeze. Never found where the problem was. There is so much on that MB, most of it invisible to the naked eye - chances are you will never find it out, but it is worth a try. Nothing to loose.

 

Well, if nothing else, I can put MB in the oven. There is a slim chance it might work.