HELP! huge SZ problem

ok so I recently purchased a sony SZ650N (btw, does anyone know the difference between the SZ650N and the SZ650N/C?) about 2 months ago, and now it has experienced frequent blue screen memory dumps and corrupt/missing file instances on startup. somehow i've always been able to get the laptop back up and running for a day or so, and then it starts to experience the trouble again. I've restored the laptop once already.

today I put the laptop to sleep and when i tried to turn it back on again, all it would do is read the hard drive twice (as in you can hear the hard drive spin twice in 1 sec), and then stop reading. nothing would ever appear on the screen, not even the screen where it says "VAIO" in big letters. the laptop doesn't make a beep noise in the beginning either signifying that the BIOS has successfully booted. you can see the power and bluetooth lights on, and the HDD read light is on for the first second of powering on then turns off forever. the fans runs continuously when a/c is plugged in, and runs every so often when running on battery. the laptop doesn't respond to keyboard entries, including raising brightness, accessing recovery partition, accessing BIOS, etc.

i've already tried resetting the laptop, as in taking the battery out, removing the RAM, putting the ram and battery back, and restarting. i have not added new ram to the system, and have not installed any new OS's.

is this something that can be fixed? is it a hard drive issue and all i need is a new one, or is the motherboard f*cked. please help!!

 

SZ650N vs SZ650N/C, the second one has the carbon frame so it is lighter.

Have you tried booting from a cd/dvd? or reinstalling your operating system from the recovery partition or cd/dvd?

 

yes i have tried booting from a cd, and the cd drive reads the disk for a couple seconds, then stops reading. nothing appears on the screen and the hdd doesn't access.

and since i can't see ANYTHING on the screen it's impossible to reinstall the OS

 

That sucks. What were you running? Vista or XP? Are you sure you purchased a new notebook and not a refurbished one?

To be honest it could be any one of a bunch of issues. You could try to substitute out the drive, the memory, and see if any (user replaceable) components are the culprit. It gets more complicated if the lamp died or worse the GPU failed.

You're still under warranty right? I'd say send it in to them.

 

I have experienced exactly like these before, mine are SZ3. I found the problem to be bad contact of the RAM Modules. Have you try rubbing eraser on the golden contact of RAM module?

Hope this help,
Kan

 

It is not a good idea to use a pencil eraser to clean any type of gold-plated contacts. The eraser will remove the gold. The eraser will also leave particles of rubber and binder and the doodoo that was on the contacts.

The best thing to use is a lint-free tissue (like Kimwipes) or a cotton tip applicator (do not use Q-Tips) with 100% ethanol or PCB cleaner.

 

thanks for all your help! lemme try this out.

 

If you still have problems remove the ac and battery and hold your finger down on the power button for 30 seconds then put back in the ac but not the battery. Try to power it on if you can see the vaio logo tap f2 to enter the bios see if the hard drive is recognized.

If you dont get that far check the led indicators. if the power led stays lit and hdd led only flashes once then its likely the ram issue try removing 1 memory module at a time in case 1 is faulty maybe swap them around so put ram module a in slot b and try to boot if that doesnt do it then try module b in slot a. to see how to remove the ram in your computer check the memory upgrade instructions or user manual for your model on sonys website.

before doing this though make sure you touch a metallic grounded object like a radiator to prevent static damage to the ram. wish you the best of luck with it and i suggest if the computer is new enough then inform the store you bought it from and sony. the store might be able to replace the computer sony can at least repair it.

 

Hi mate,

Try this out, something similar happened with my FZ, I hope this helps you. Watch if the symptoms I experienced match any of yours, specially the one that is related to not saving the date and time.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=269589

The fix is posted in the last reply.

 

BSOD is a real pain. Not likely a hard drive problem. It can mean bad RAM, bad mobo or even a loose / damaged CPU.

Is it still under warranty? If it was me and there was no warranty left, I'd just take it all apart, clean it and reset everything.

 

No, both are the exact same thing.