SZ791 Random Failure to Post

Within the last week, my SZ791 has begun to be reluctant to boot.

When I press the power button the power and Bluetooth light will come on and nothing else. If I hold the power button to turn it off and then turn it back on it will eventually boot.

I know it is going to boot when the "speed" or "stamina" light comes on, after that all is well.

Any ideas?

 

Hi Robert,
I haven't seen that with mine (yet...).

The Sony people seem to be very helpful- really. You can stop laughing now- the third tier guys are great. I would suggest calling the first tiers, patiently putting up with their " interesting" ideas- like reformat and install... Don't do that BTW. Then ask for a supervisor,and request from him (or her) a third tier escalation. You will get the phone number (888 I think) that puts you right into a group who can not only speak good English, but actually knows what they are talking about.

Questions you need to have ready for them-
1) Is this only when coming out of a sleep mode?
2) What version of the BIOS do you have?

Best of luck to you.

Tom

 

Thank you Tom,

I will give them a call...

It is turning it on from off, I do not know that I have ever let it just go to sleep, but hibernate is the same problem...

Next time I turn, it off I will get the bios version when it reboots...

 

The bios is R0121S5

I called today because it took about 20 tries last night to get it to come on. Tried to get to a supervisor but it didn't work. Guy on the phone insisted they would format the hard drive anyway if I had to send it in, and if reformating it didn't work it would have to come back. So there really wasn't anything to lose. I had already backed it up so I finally went along with it.

I told the support guy that I didn't see how that could do it, particularly since it wouldn't even boot from a Vista DVD last night when it was acting up...

Anyway, the reformat does seem to have fixed it, it is on about its 5th boot since and seems hasn't displayed the problem, time will tell I guess.

 

One thing I'd suggest is to take out the battery, unplug the notebook, and press the power button a few times to drain any excess electricity running around in there. Sometimes that fixes some start-up problems.

If you couldn't POST before, I would refrain from saying the reformat fixed it because the OS doesn't even come into play until after POST.

Do you have an external hard drive plugged in by any chance? My notebook won't boot if I have one plugged in, it will not POST.

 

Yeah, i did the whole remove battery, ac adapter, hold power button, disconnect external devices thing...

I had pretty much exactly the same conversation with sony dude about the windows having nothing to do, but it is kind of hard to argure that its on about its 15th boot since and no problems...

 

Well, I (we) were right and they were wrong.

Took 3 tries this morning...

adding "sit overnight" to the list of conditions.

 

"Reformat the machine" is an old and lame TS trick that does nothing for you, but helps improve the stats for that TSR, since you go away for many hours.

 

Yeah I know, I've let them know thay I wasn't happy about having my time wasted.

They will be getting a letter, I'm not a happy Customer and am a LONG time Sony owner (think z505sx).

When I get time to box it up it is headed for California...

 

It is supposed to be on its way back to me.

They formatted the drive again, and replaced the mainboard.

I'll detail completely when it arrives back, but so far the service has been every bit as horrible as anyone has ever said it could be...