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    PCG-GR300P video problem

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by grinderhand, Nov 17, 2006.

  1. grinderhand

    grinderhand Newbie

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    I have a GR300 that my wife spilled Pepsi into (twice). The first time the damage was limited to the keyboard, which was easily fixed by replacing it. The second time was more extensive. Here are the symptoms:

    -The unit will work fine with an external monitor connected
    -When powered on with the charger connected or a charged battery, the LCD is visible as working under a bright light, but the backlight does not work
    -When powered on without the charger connected and the battery almost completely discharged, the LCD works, but the backlight and the green power light flash on and off about once a second in unison
    -When attempting to boot with a nearly discharged battery, eventually it will die somewhere in the booting process and when this happens, the backlight stays on to display the last contents of the LCD, which slowly fades, but the backlight continues to be steadily lit, even after plugging in the charger.

    This happened about 2 years ago and I am trying to resurrect this machine to use as a backup to her replacement Dell, which is starting to exhibit some problems. About a year ago, I purchased on eBay a display assembly which did not include the backlight or LCD but had the top cover, hinges, all the cabling and the inverter, thinking that the inverter was the problem. The replacement inverter gave the same results, so this leads me to believe that the problem may be some corruption with the video card (if this laptop has such a thing and it's not built onto the MB), but then why would it work with an external monitor? Perhaps both inverters were bad? I have disassembled the machine to the point of R&R on the keyboard and removing the bezel from around the LCD to access the inverter, but no further than that.

    There is some slight evidence of Pepsi incursion on the top of the framework under the keyboard, but it does not look like there was a lot that got in there. There are currently a couple of MB's for sale on eBay, and a display with a cracked LCD and a good backlight but nothing else, so I am wondering which way I should proceed next. This unit did not get a lot of use in it's lifetime, so it should still be a viable machine (1.2Ghz, 15" display, 60GB, 512M, DVD drive).

    Does anyone have any expertise or advice they could share? Any input at all would be appreciated.

    Thanks in advance.
     
    grinderhand, Nov 17, 2006
    #1