Defective Nvidia chipsets in your current Vaio?

I see your point, but it won't help us. nVidia can't do anything about this now it seems, in fear of going bankrupt. SONY bought the bad merchandise, sold it to us, and take no responsibility for it. Of course it's nVidia's fault, but they didn't sell me anything. SONY is the only one who can do something here and treating their costumers worse than Dell, HP and Apple is not going to win them any new costumers. I know now that Dell, HP and Apple are more reliable than SONY and that's their problem.

 

I ve had problems with my Z590 drivers related to nvidia i hope its not this problem. you can see on my other threads i document it. i have a 4 yr warranty so maybe i should keep the omputer in speed modetill it breaks down

 

Having a Macbook Pro that has already had one logic board replaced to fix a dead nVidia 8600 GPU, I personally will not buy any laptop containing any nVidia part.

This is precisely why I bought my FW290 CTO with the ATI HD3650 GPU in December.

If people actively stop buying nVidia mobile chipset based systems perhaps they will come up with a plan to reimburse the various OEMs saddled with thousands of defective logic boards related to these 8x00 series GPU failures. If the OEMs knew they would receive some compensation beyond the few dollars nVidia pays to cover their defective component, perhaps they would be more likely to extend the warranties only the affected systems.

Cheers,

 

If people don't buy NVidia at all the company would be bankrupt pretty soon.

I suppose if people stopped buying the faulty chipsets (last I checked they were still on sale) it may help.

 

Hmmm, maybe that's not so bad.... (a bankrupt nVidia) just kidding.

I understand, but the frustration of all these millions of owners living in limbo makes it really hard to recommend their mobile products. From what I understand the desktop products don't have any issues.

Also, you are quite correct, stores are still selling laptops with the potentially affected GPUs. Just proves there are a ton of people who have no idea this problem exists. Sort of speaks to the lack of reading or listening to the news by a good segment of the buying public.

Cheers,

 

I know where you are comming from.
I find it quite sad that too that people are having so many problems wih Sony regarding this issue.

Desktop cards have failed - there was a mention in here about it, but much fewer due to different heat managment & usage patterns.

The constatn "up and down" in temperature in laptop GPUs adds to the strain.

And the laptops with faulty chips - yes, that is true, its too little reading, and its greed on the part of companies like Dell - they should have pulled the product the moment the issue was discovered...

 

When I buy electronics I just assume that they don't contain parts that are known to be defective. This isn't something that you should have to read up on first.

 

No you shouldn't have to, however, such assumptions are naive at best.

When I spend $500, $1000 or $2000 or more on a piece of equipment, computer or otherwise, I do a fair amount of research before I spend my money. As it relates to this issue, such research done 2 years ago would not have helped, however, the nVidia GPU problems have been widely reported since July 2008.

I really can't see anyone selling, and worse purchasing the 8400 or 8600 series of mobile GPUs. The potential for problems is too great and while millions of systems have not experienced problems, the number of systems affected grows everyday as these systems age through use.

The problem isn't going away and I can just imagine the number of used systems that will be dumped on the market at 2-3 years in hope of passing the problem to someone else.

Cheers,

 

By the way, what happened to the $150 to $200 million dollar charge that nVidia was taking related to "higher than normal" failure rates in notebooks for it's (unspecified) "previous generation" GPU and/or it's thermal system.

There's no way we/Sony can get any part of that?

 

That charge was taken to reimburse the oems for the cost of replacing all these defective GPUs (which they only pay for the cost of the defective part, not the fully intergrated motherboard). It also covers the legal costs of defending the various lawsuits surrounding this issue. Don't believe any of that money will ever get to you except tangentially via a Sony out-of-warranty repair (if they ever offer such a program).

Cheers,

 

Just stumbled upon this thread. Other then the nVidia chip problem are there other, significant issues with the Sony VAIO laptops, specifically the FW series that I should know about? Issues that are affecting many users, ie: my chances of encountering the problem are high?

I was going to buy an HP HDX16t. However, after toiling with the HP coupon fiasco, I finally started looking at other machines.

Now looking at the Sony FW390 and new Dell 1640.

 

FW series doesn't use nVidia graphics card so the chance for you to get an answer here is not good. You might want to try the official FW thread.

 

Another update.
Just got off the phone with my vendors technical support, they said that my complaint (consumer complaint) went through and that they will repair my computer without any cost. Finally some restitution! This basically means that they (the vendor) don't think that I caused the fault and that this is a manufacturer fault which were there from the beginning. This is possible because in Sweden we have a 2 year manufacturers warranty on certain products.

 

So Finally yesterday i got my pc back. However, when i turned on the pc, windows wansn't properly installed (the tech. told me they had successfully reinstalled Vista) . After getting upset and just restoring the system to factory settings on my own, I noticed that it still has the NVIDIA 8400M GT card...or so it says on the display settings popup.

According to the tech. all they did was replace the motherboard. However im quite apprehensive about it.. If it still has the same NVIDIA card....will this just keep happening over and over?

At this point I dont really know what to do. My notebook is a little over a year old and it has already gone to the repair center 3 times because of the same problem.

 

This is the crux of the problem. Thousands of Macbook Pro users have the same issue. Each time the nVidia 8600 GPU in their system fails the logic board is replaced with another one containing the exact same GPU. this has resulted in some users having their logic boards replaced 2 or 3 times. We consider our systems timebombs waiting to fail any moment. While Apple extended the warranty on the affected systems by 12 months, Sony has not and even if they did, is 12 months enough.

I think consumers need to demand the GPU problem be covered for the life of the system. If this was like the exploding battery problem (a safety issue) we would have received satisfaction long ago.

So long as there is not financial or legal incentive, Sony will most likely do nothing!

Cheers,

 

I, for one, am never going to buy another Sony product again.

 

I personally would stick with ATI-based mobile GPUs.

Quite a few Mac users feel the same way even after Apple agreed to extend the warranty on systems containing the affected GPUs, however, I believe the problem ultimately lies with nVidia and we should really focus on avoiding their products. A little financial punishment short of driving nVidia to insolvency (not likely) might teach them a lesson.

Sony is not without a share of the blame, especially since they really haven't done anything to acknowledge or mitigate the nVidia problem.

Hopefully, ATI's recent announcement regarding the availability of more powerful mobile GPUs will convince more OEMs to use their products instead.

Cheers,

 

To save me reading the whole thread of 62 pages, how will i know if i have a defective Nvidia graphics card ?

Mine is a Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT.

My fan seems to work a lot and never goes off even with an empty desktop, would this be a symptom ?

 

There is no real symptom I believe - although I think they did overheat immediately before failing.

But sadly you have one of the afected GPUs.

 

Many users have reported graphics glitches, vertical lines, flickering, etc. When the 8600 in my Macbook Pro died, it just booted with a blank screen. I could hear the drive boot up the OS, but no display on the internal screen or my external LCD monitor. Logic board was replaced (with the same 8600 GPU) and off I go waiting for the next failure.

I bought a Sony FW 290 CTO with the ATI HD3650 for my gaming with the grandkids to take some pressure off the Mac so hopefully the GPU replacement will last longer than the 15 months the original did.

Cheers,

 

i totally understand what you're saying. Rest assured, I'm going to stick with ATI as well. However, the fact that Sony just chooses to ignore the problem...and the fact that i only got a mb replace because i bought a 4 year warranty...means that if i didnt... i wouldve had to paid around 700 dollars to fix a laptop thats a little over a year old...and it was only going to crash eventually again.

that is terrible customer service. So pretty much its Sony's customer service that has convinced me not to buy another sony product again.

**UPDATE**

Today i called Sony Support and expressed my concern regarding this issue. the fact that my mb had been replaced 3 times already for the same problem, the fact that these chipsets are known to be defective and the other pc companies accepting it so (in a nutshell).

The representative told me that if at any time Sony had a considerable amount of cases reported, they would probably extend warranties, or help us in some way. But, at the moment, there were not enough cases (or something around the lines of that).

Im sure a considerable amount of cases have already been reported...however im not sure if they have been classified as such.

I know this is similar to what weve heard before, but just wanted to give a heads up. At least I let her know that i was aware of what the problem was, if that means anything.

 

Yes, but that happened once the GPU was already broken, no?
That's my understanding of the case.

 

I haven't been reading much about this issue of late but has there been any type of class action lawsuit on this stupidity yet?

 

Looks like there is one related to shareholder dissatisfaction over the lack of disclosure with regard to the full scope of the problem.

No, I shutdown one night and in the morning it was dead. I had definitely played a ton of RTS games in bootcamp mode running Vista Business 32 but that should not kill the GPU. My older Macbook Pro with the ATI x1600 works just fine and is pushing 3 years.

I think the real frustration here is that Sony doesn't even acknowledge the issue. After 90 days of denial (Apple claimed nVidia told them none of the GPUs delivered to Apple were affected), Apple finally acknowledged the problem and made a token gesture to its users. Sony, at the very least, needs to do the same.

Cheers,

 

Wow... Just found this thread, and unfortunately I can't take the temperature or check any other details of the graphics chip in my VAIO SZ due to the fact that it died a couple of months ago... one month out of warranty

I didn't realise at the time that there was a known problem with these graphics chips... I sent it away to a company that said they could repair that sort of thing without having to replace the whole motherboard (so far more cheaply), eventually got it back about a month later, and managed to kill it again within 20 minutes of actually trying to make use of the graphics card

I've just finally given up on it and bought a VAIO Z to replace it... and probably going to try to sell the SZ off for parts (i.e. the working ones)... but before I do that, is there any chance I might still be able to get Sony to do something about this?

By the way, if anyone is interested, I can tell you exactly what it did when it failed and what it does when I try to boot it up now.

Edit: Wow, now I'm confused... I couldn't get it to switch to Stamina mode at all before (when it first stopped working, I tried everything to get it to switch but it just wouldn't do it, so I assumed the Windows drivers did the actual switching between the graphics cards, rather than the physical switch actually doing anything)... so I had no way of getting into Windows at all after it broke... it just never got that far... but I've just got it out and tried again, and it now seems to be switching between Speed and Stamina mode instantly each time I reboot it, and indeed everything looks fine on Stamina mode! Just need to put the hard disk back in now to actually boot it up, I took it out a while ago so I could get my data off it... In fact, maybe that's why it's going with the switch setting on each bootup now? Because there's no hard disk for it to read the previous setting from? *shrug*

Edit 2: Hard disk now in and it still switches graphics modes on boot, and starts up fine in Stamina mode. So no idea why it wouldn't switch modes before.

There is at least one small plus to all of this... I am getting very adept at taking this thing apart and putting it back together

 

No,the SZ still has a physical switch - which is extremely useful.
Sorry to hear about your SZ - I believe yours is the second to fail.

I use my SZ on the X3100 (Intel) exclusively really - reason: I don't need extra graphics power and its lasts longer on batter.
(and saves the 8400GS for when I do need it)

If your laptop works in Stamina - that's how I use it - why not continue to use it?

 

While that is a good way to keep the machine going, don't you think he should keep the pressure on Sony to fix the nVidia problem?

Cheers,

 

Oh... I thought a lot more (or at least a few more) had failed and been posted about here? Or do you mean they were other models of VAIO with the same graphics, and mine's the second SZ?

I didn't have the option of using Stamina mode before... it just wouldn't change into it... but now that I do, it's still pretty much useless to me... The GeForce graphics chip was pretty much the entire reason I bought the SZ in the first place, otherwise I would have gone for a TZ or even just stuck with my old TR5. I think I only went into Stamina mode once in the whole year I was using it for, just to try it out... but found it took far too long to reboot to change modes when I needed the proper graphics again (or to reboot into Stamina mode before using it for browsing or general work... as I usually left it in hibernate or standby).

I am finding the Speed/Stamina switch on the Z more useful though, because it changes instantly so I am using that when just browsing websites etc. Although to be honest, I've hardly touched my new Z so far... not got all my stuff set up on it yet... I think part of me is scared something is gonna go wrong again like it did with the SZ, lol

 

Keeping the pressure on Sony is a good idea (in a civilized manner)
But it would be a waste of a great machine if its not used.

It was FZs that failed.
Only one SZ (maybe 2 - but no more)
But quite a few FZ I have to say

Well - I got mine for anything but the graphics (for the processor, and light weight)
I suppose its a matter of opinion on the Stamina Speed switch - and in your case, the integrated card will "run along" when you are in "speed mode".

Anyway - if you continue to bug Sony - best of luck!

 

Well... I actually haven't even told Sony about this yet, as I thought it was just me until I found this thread last night, it was out of the warranty, and I didn't get anywhere when I had previously contacted them to find out where I could get a part for the SZ.

Can someone advise me of the best way to let them know about this? Even if they won't do anything for me, I'd still like them to know that there are more people experiencing this issue.

 

Try to open a case with them - talk to the highest person possible.

 

Ok... is that a case in the VAIO-Link e-Support thingy (which is where I got absolutely nowhere before trying to find out about a part), or somewhere else?

 

Yepp that - maybe ask for a manager - sound well informed, if they try to block you out - say you talked to a lawyer bla bla bla.

Make sure you put them on the spot - try with pressure - but keep it civilized.

Good luck!!

(Maybe you get somewhere at last... )

 

lol ok, I'll try.

Thanks

 

Document who you speak to and when. Names numbers dates every scrap of detail you can keep.

Gary

 

Hi again,

Update: my Vaio returned from the Sony Repair Center last week. It spent almost a whole month in the Sony Repair Center in Germany.

Unfortunately, as I expected and was afraid of, the notebook wasn't repaired at all. In the service report I can read that the fvlc cable was replaced (but of course they "could not remember" to write down in the service report that the hinges were also repaired, as a matter of fact for the second time!). So when at last I got my Vaio back I pressed the power button and guess what kind of screen appeared...... The screen which appears every time the computer freezes ( i.e. the screen where you can choose whether you want to run it in the safe mode or in the safe mode with network and so on)! It means that after their “repair” my Vaio froze again in the Sony Repair Center, but all they did was to keep the power button pressed for 5-6 seconds to turn it off and send it back to me.

To be frank, after that “safe mode” screen I still hoped that my Vaio was really repaired. That is why I restarted the system and tried working. Vaio was working properly for a few hours. When I finished my work (editing a photo) I closed all programs and started reading a book –at this time Vaio was lying on the table and only Vaio screensaver was active. And suddenly Vaio froze. I restarted it and after a few minutes system froze again. Later I could not run the system because of colorful dots and lines on the screen. Then I decided to conduct the full system recovery from my recovery CDs. As you can guess the Sony technicians did not formatted the operating system. Unfortunately the recovery process could not have been finished –during installing Windows Vista the computer froze again.

I called Vaio Link Support on Monday and got to know that all what they could do then was to take Vaio back to the Sony Repair Center to conduct another diagnostic tests(!). They were to take vaio on Tuesday but “something” went wrong and my Vaio was taken only on Wednesday. Till Friday they were not able to find any problem in my Vaio! I am still waiting now… Can you believe all that situation?? :confused2:

 

I can't quite believe it.

I think they have some memoe to stall the issue.

In fact, when my battery failed there were very helpful - yes, they did suggest a restore via WIndows which made a mess out of everything, but as someone pointed out, they have a checklist they have to go through.

The problems you have experienced seem like a denial of the problem.

I hope they'll replace the motherboard - although this doens't solve your problem per se, it would allow you to use the computer.

 

The question is how long my Vaio will be able to work after the successful repair (if they can do that at all) and how many times they can replace mobo? I did not pay so much money for Vaio and for extended warranty not to have Vaio at home for most time!

 

That is true.
Time - depends on usage pattern - sorry I can't be more specific.

It is true that it isn't a solution - but ist a step in the right way.

 

Seems like Sony support could use some improvements. Sounds very frustrating. I'm just curious about one thing.

Was the original problem related to a nvidia GPU failure? This sounds more like a defective motherboard in general.

Cheers,

 

Hey guys, I have a question... some of you have reported calling sony multiple times, every day since at least a couple weeks ago. I am wondering how you are doing this because the number that I called on Sony's support contact website leads to an automated billing service for even PLACING the call. It is upwards $50 or more just to place a support call... I can't justify spending that much money to talk to someone who I know will not help me, because this issue is clearly bigger than something those support techs can handle. Surely you guys are not willing to spend $50-100 every time you call them... are you calling a number that has free tech support or something?

I am personally outraged that it costs money to simply call them, even if this is standard protocol for most companies....

 

US Vaio Support
No charge warranty support

In English: 1-888-476-6972

In Spanish: 1-888-476-6972 - Select the option for Spanish support
Hours: Monday - Saturday 11:00AM-8:00PM EST

or for Customer Relations

1-888-476-6972

International (Calling from outside the US or Canada): 1-239-768-7669

Cheers,

 

hey, thanks.. much appreciated... since my warranty is up would i have to call that customer relations number?

 

Yes, I am very very frustrated with my Vaio (it is crashing all the time)!! The Vaio service did nothing to repair my computer for almost a month!

I believe that the craches are connected with nVidia defective chipset because everything started form BSOD (report: 0x124_GenuineIntel), colourful dots and lines, which still appear on my screen. And all the problems take place when the computer is very very hot, after intensive work. After a few hour rest the computer is able to work for some time, but after the first freezing it needs to be restarted very 10 minutes or so....till the moment when you can choose only the safe mode... Sometimes even the safe mode is almost invisible because of dots and colourful lines on the screen. Then vaio needs to rest for a few hours again (or for a night) and after that you can usually work 5-6 hours and everything starts again... :cry:

 

Sounds like they definitely need to replace the motherboard. This was happening with many early Macbook Pros and the culprit was too much thermal paste on the CPU. Constant overheating caused strange glitches both graphics and otherwise.

Cheers,

 

Good news for me: I got the MasterCard double-warranty thing sorted out. Just waiting on some papers or something to be shipped from Sony, then I can get my computer repaired for free at the expense of Mastercard. This doesn't really mean that much because my computer will simply break once again in roughly a year's time, but perhaps by then there will have been some justifying action on either Sony or nVidia's part for the whole line of affected GPUs. I wonder if I can purchase the extended warranty now also on the Mastercard, and have that double as well, so I would be covered for several years now... anyway, I'll still be checking this thread periodically and doing whatever I can to support the cause.

Cheers.

 

I think someone once did some research - it only doubles to 2 years total I think.

Anyway - at least you have your laptop 1 year longer - by which it may be obsolete - take that as (although not good) consolation.

 

I thought I'd add my experience just in case it's useful to anyone reading here.

I too have had the exact same problem with my Sony Vaio VGN-FZ11Z (Nvidia GeForce 8400M) and I managed to get it fixed by my local laptop repair shop. I booked my laptop into repair before I found this forum and was unaware of the issue with the Nvidia 8400 and 8600 GPU's.

Basically, four months out of warranty and the graphics card completely crapped out with the same symptoms as many others here are reporting: vertical stripes and regular | | | | | | | patterns right across the screen on boot up, and then almost unreadable graphics when into Windows. My machine had been running extremely hot on the lower left area of the keypad for a while.

The engineer at the repair shop was seemed familiar with the fault and was confident that he could help me out - and he managed to fix it. I'm an engineer myself so I was curious to know what the guy was able to do to fix what I had now come to understand was a major GPU manufacturing problem that had caused my machine to be a potential write off (or at least a new motherboard) after just sixteen months.

After a successful repair (I'm using the machine to write this now) the advice that I got from the laptop engineer was that the cooling system on my machine had become so clogged with dust that there was almost no air flow. This obviously causes the GPU to get extremely hot, so hot in fact that apparently it can melt itself into, or become detached from the circuit board.

His remedy? Doesn't sound very subtle - he uses a heat gun to re-seat the offending chip back into position! Apparently he has done this many times before.

The only other fix or tweak I'm aware of is that the engineer has set the cooling fan run continuous - a little annoying if only for the noise factor (I very rarely run my machine on the battery so I'm not concerned with battery life). Of course I'm aware that a continuously running fan poses an increased risk of dragging extra dust into the system and increased wear. But further advice I was given was to give the cooling system a good blast with canned air every now and then to clear it out.

Anyway up, I was very pleased to get my machine back working, but I wasn't completely convinced that this was the answer - I wanted to know the engineers opinion on the controversy brewing with Nvidia. The guy tells me that the GPU in my machine is a good graphics card and he was adamant that the problem was caused by a clogged cooling system. In fact he even told me I'm lucky it's an Nvidia - if it was an ATI he wouldn't be able to do a thing with it!

I'm going to monitor the situation to see how things go - I've had the machine running constantly all day and so far the GPU seems to be running much, much cooler - the machine is working fine (apart from the fan noise).

This might not be the experiences of others and I'm not saying this is the answer for everyone, and for sure Sony and Nvidia possibly have some serious questions to answer. But whichever way I look at it my laptop was out of warranty and I needed to get it fixed quick, and it was fixed and back within 3 days - I didn't have to battle with Sony and I didn't need to buy an expensive new motherboard. I am of course a little annoyed that I had to shell out £120 to get the machine fixed just four months after the warranty ran out, but I can't conclusively blame the problem on a faulty GPU.

If I have any further bad experiences I'll share them with the forum - if it's useful here's a link to the web site of the guys I used to get my machine back from the dead, I’d recommend them anytime from now on. (Apologies to anyone outside of the UK).

http://www.laptoprepair.co.uk

Paul Mick

 

That is a strange experiece - I mean... it doesn't make sense from a logical point of view...

Still happy to hear your laptop works again.

 

My FZ-4000 recently suffered the same problems people have seen here: jagged lines across the screen, sometimes black vertical bars, sometimes red blocks, all of it. I can't even boot into Windows outside of safe mode without getting a blue screen, and even in safe mode, the screen isn't readable. I can't even read the BIOS screen.

This happened without any warning just a couple days after I started encoding some video files using HandBrake. I noticed the computer had been running hotter than usual, then one day, I set it to encode a dvd while I was out, and I came back to a jagged blue screen. I haven't seen my screen clearly since. I'd been doing some light gaming off and on (Age of Empires III, mostly) for the past 10 months, but nothing too intense until I started encoding.

The good news (for me) is that I still have about 7 weeks of warranty coverage left. Sony has sent a box for me to ship it back to them, and that should arrive on Monday.

But my question is: what's the "fix" for this? I'm going to send this on to Sony under warranty, but what are they going to do? If they actually replace the graphics chip, won't they just be replacing it with another faulty 8400M? Is my computer going to be a ticking time bomb, maybe holding out for another year until the GPU fails again?

Then again, what other options are there? I mean, I can't exactly get Sony to give me my money back -- can I?