Sony Vaio Z12 won't start after applying Thermal compound

Hi everyone,

My CPU was overheating so I thought applying thermal compound would do the trick. I watched one of the guides on how to dismantling Vaio Z12. First time I did it, laptop restarted but CPU temperature actually went up on idle so I took it apart again and maually spread thermal compound using my finger wrapped in plastic bag to get more coverage. Now my computer will not start. The fan will not turn on - when I plug in the power I do not hear the fan and the computer would just shut off after 10 seconds. The heat sink would get really hot.

I did make sure the CPU fan is connected properly.

Anyone knows what might be the problem here? I could clean out all the thermal compound and try again(didnt think I did that properly last time) but the fact that the fan wont turn out might reflect another problem? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Ke

 

Are you sure you remembered to plug the fan connector back in? I forgot that once. Anyway, good idea to see it is seated properly.

 

Yes I triple checked it. It was the first thing I thought of as well. Unpluged and plugged it back in and made sure wires were intact.

 

Is the fan rotating freely? Try nudging it with a pin or something. Maybe something is jamming it.

I have had to clean and lubricate the fan shaft several times now. When the heatsink is dismantled, pull the fan rotor straight out (carefully, as the blades are brittle and break rather easily). Clean the shaft , the recessed area, and the hole in which the shaft goes (bush). Use grease, not sewing machine oil. I needed to do this as miy fan had stopped rotating. Might be a coincidence that in your case the same happened while you were fiddling around with it.

 

You might have overdone the compound, open it, scrape some off and make sure you seat the heat-sink properly and reassemble making sure you plug all cables and connectors in properly..

 

What happened? Same thing happened to me. The fan won't rotate. Once it booted into Win7 but immediately shut down. It does not seem to boot and heat sink gets really hot.

 

Sounds like a fan problem... but in the future don't use a finger to spread it around. no matter what compound your using, check the specific way to apply it on different cpu's over at arcticsilver.com. I've have had good results using the coffee filter method. In any event, you want the compound as even and as thin as possible.

 

Yea tried reapply thermal compound with just a minimal dot, fan still wont turn on. How could it just break suddenly? I merely connect and disconnected it once.

 

Weird problem indeed, and I have the same problem too. I put a NEW fan, and now both don't work. I applied thermal paste too. Checked the connector, etc. and BIOS settings.. Still fan doesnt turn. What could be it?

 

We don't know what you did and how you did it. If the motherboard is flexed too much, sometimes some IC pins will come loose; sometimes the tracks on the motherboard develop tiny cracks. This is why we do things slowly and carefully, and hope for the best.

Which thermal paste are you using? Is it possible that some of the stuff got in between the pins of the CPU/GPU etc.? Could you try cleaning that off. Use paste only on the flat (shiny) portion of the chip; do not allow it to spill over onto the pins/ board.

 

Found the problem!! Turns out I didnt put the ram back in. I was going back and forth so must've have forgotten this piece. But I remember the first time it wouldnt turn on, I did have the ram installed, wierd. But the commputer does turn on now. CPU idols about 60C so the thermal paste was effective.

Unfortunately I broke my keyboard ribbon connector so now my trackpad and half the keyboards don't work. Anyone know if I can get a replaced part for this? The keyboard side of the connector seemed to be soldered onto the socket but I do see people selling the ribbon.