Problem with my Vaio

Hi.
I have a VERY irritating problem...
If my laptop turns on, it either freezes, BSODs, or black screens (could be anywhere from the windows loading logo to doing some work on word, etc.)
And if it doesnt turn on, well it does; the hdd light goes on (for a second), same with the battery light (the battery light is fine though), but the screen is black; i can hear hdd activity though and if i throw a cd in there, it spins properly and whatnot, but it just doesnt do anything past the blank screen.

An external monitor doesnt work, and reformatting seemed to have helped abit, but then it just got worse 2 days ago; I can't get past the black screen after I turn it on.

I'm 99% sure its a hardware problem, and I'd be willing to replace whatever it is if I knew what it was, but I dont know if it's the hdd, or the ram, or the video card, etc.

Oh yeah, I've also taken the laptop apart; so reseating the ram and hdd doesnt work =/

 

go to bestbuy and buy a hdd $80 and ram $depends on laptop , replace one at a time or get a diag $70 from geeksquad, its probably your hdd or ram reason im telling you to buy them is because you can return whatever you dont want.... can you load into bios.. pm me for more info...,

 

I mostly agree with Yaseer.

Question: do you have a desktop or a second computer?

If so...

1.) Go to a compuer store and pick up an external 2.5" HDD enclosure. Take your HDD out of your Vaio and slip it in there. Connect it to your desktop via the enclosure (USB) and use HDTune or some other HDD utility to see if there are any problem's with the drive's health. If the HDD tuns out healthy, then there is a strong probability that your problem is more likely related to either the motherboard or memory.

Now, I know you said you "reseated" your memory, but moving a memory stick from one slot to another is not going to help you figure out anything if the memory stick in question is bad. If, after you test the HDD, you find the HDD to be error/problem-free, then you should take the memory stick(s) out completely and replace them with a new stick.

If your problems STILL occur, you can rest assured that you've successfully eliminated all reasonable possibilities and you now know you have a bad motherboard and will need to be replaced.

2.) You can always drag it to a computer service center or a Sony Store and leave it with them to run tests on.

 

problem is, it's a 1.8" hard drive, and it's an old model so it's not that easy to find thatk ind of ram either (btw there's only 1 memory slot)

Oh and I have multiple pc's in my house, but none utilizing a 1.8" hdd

 

if you get an external enclosure, you can put the HDD inside of it, then connect the enclosure (which is holding your HDD) to one of your other computers.

here's one, for example:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...ernal+enclosure&type=product&id=1175389041039

available at all Best Buy stores.

as for your ram, take it out when you go to Best Buy and show it to them so that they can find another stick of the same speed and design to fit your Vaio.

 

I would test the ram by booting a memtest cd

you can download and burn the free .iso file to cd. get it here:
http://www.memtest.org/