Ugh-bricked my Z11 Windows 8

First off- I am a and deserve all this trouble for ever installing Windows 8.

I have a VPCZ112GX, I installed Win 8 and everything was working ok...


Now I am caught in a total blank screen loop of some sort.


Let me describe the problem. The laptop screen is blank, but slight illumination. Holding down the power button puts the computer in some sort of Win 8 hibernation mode. I can't even get to the bios screen (no splash vio screen)

I think it's a gfx switchable issue...win 8 is trying to display the screen somewhere.

I have hooked up Hdmi and VGA external monitors...no luck...


Gaaaaa I'm so pissed at myself.

How can I force a total reboot so I can get to the bios or even format/reinstall windows 7


Btw, I estimate I have removed batter / total power down/ hold power button no less than 500x at this point.

 

Update

I got the bios to boot and reformatted to win 7

Screen still blank 2 out of every 3 boots

Crazy.

Any ideas?

 

sounds like a hardware issue, LVDS cable comes to mind or GPU

 

Do you mean you don't see the BIOS screen, or you don't see your Windows desktop?

 

i can now see the bios splash screen and windows 7 dsktop on some reboots..not on all...


im going to start installing all the drivers/utilities this am and see if that gets be back to normal...


what a dang mess..

 

So, you still can't see the BIOS splash screen on all boots? I had black screen issues when I had W8 installed, but all I had to do to to restore the computer was to press the button once to get it to standby and the press the power button again to get it back out of standby and back to Windows.

 

im back to win 7...was in gfx driver free-for-all..

thanks for the replys peeps

 

Why on earth did you not install Win8 as a VM?

 

I had the same issue - black screen on boot after shutdown. Fixed it by turning off 'fast startup' in power options. Seems to have issues with hybrid drivers.

Power options
Choose what the power button does
Change settings that are currently unavailable
Uncheck the box for 'Turn on fast startup (recommended) (yeah right! )

I'm using Windows 8 Consumer Preview 64bit. Display driver by Andrew08 from this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/342947-my-discoveries-vaio-z-s-hybrid-graphics.html

 

Ugh, that black screen issue was killing Windows 8 for me so now I'm back to stock Windows 7. Just curious, but is startup any different with fast startup unticked?

 

Nope. Just takes a little longer - like Windows 7 - and minus the display issue.

M$ is making a big deal about the fast startup thngy - how Windows 8 boots in seconds - if it works, of course.

 

Oh yeah, one more thing I remember about Windows 8 is that I have constant audio dropouts due to very high DPC latency - very annoying and noticable with music. Have you experienced anything like that?

 

No. I don't listen to music on the VPCZ1 a lot, but I watch a lot of films (both SD and HD) and I haven't had an issue with sound (through earphones, of course - the speakers suck). I use Media Player Classic and Windows 8 codecs . Shark007.net - Windows 8 Codecs - WMP12 Codecs

Most of the Metro apps don't work for my region.

 

I listen to a lot of music via headphones with a soundcard connected via USB. I can't quite remember if I tried using the normal earphones plug.

Haha. The only apps that I tried using were solitaire, weather and I accidentally took a few photos of myself with the camera app. I also used the "Desktop" app, if that's counted. I guess I didn't really look past metro being a glorified start menu.