Reinstalling Sony Vaio BIOS

Hi everyone,

I recently had a computer crash with my Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31Z, due to a software failure.
I had it repaired by a technician (not under warranty anymore), and I lost all partitions containing the Sony recovery software.

After a lot of work downloading the original drivers and reinstalling them (in the correct order) I am now running Windows 7 (originally Vista was installed) but of course without all the original Sony software (like Sony Update etc...).

But now I've noticed that my BIOS is acting weird. I just found out that I can't install the original NVidia driver anymore, neither on Windows 7 or Vista. Once I try to do that, and I reboot, it gives me a bluescreen and I get all kinds of weird colored dots and striped on my screen. It says "Page fault in non-paged area", so I run Windows startuprepair and it fixes it (by uninstalling the Nvidia driver). Also, on startup, I get the Vaio logo, but it's a bit deformed (pixelated, warped, etc...) similar to this: http://www.google.be/imgres?q=sony+vaio+startup+logo+pixelated&start=197&um=1&hl=nl&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=709&tbm=isch&tbnid=twcI_MWsqlrRDM:&imgrefurl=http://article.wn.com/view/2012/05/24/Chips_Not_Just_for_Gamers_Anymore/&docid=hpJEbWV4BkagwM&imgurl=http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JDl-ZxA2G_Y/0.jpg&w=480&h=360&ei=x3ySUNK-EeG_0QWRh4CYDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=417&vpy=30&dur=398&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=82&ty=87&sig=112231823195252370857&page=9&tbnh=151&tbnw=240&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,i:298

Also, I can't get my battery to work properly anymore. My technician says he doesn't know how to fix it, because the BIOS is probably corrupt or something.

I have never changed anything to it, it's still the original BIOS.

Do you guys know a (safe) way to reinstall the BIOS or to repair it?

Thank you very much.

 

That kind of repeating video problem makes me think this is a memory problem. I had a similar problem on my dell although it looked slightly different. On mine, it ended up being bad gpu ram, but for you i would try running a ram memory check because its easy to do:
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

To install a bios (flash), just download the latest bios released for your laptop from the support website, then follow the directions. either the image is burned to a cd, then booted, or there is a application that installs it from within windows.

unfortunately i have a feeling your laptop's problem is a bad gpu or some sort of motherboard problem.

 

I've tried but I can't find a downloadable version anywhere on Sony's website for my model ...

 

try looking through the FZ owners thread. maybe someone can help you there, or even extract their bios for you.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...04-vaio-fz-owners-official-owners-thread.html