VAIO VGN-FZ21M - GPU and BD-drive issues

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice - I've been having some problems with my VAIO VGN-FZ21M over the past few days. Here's basically what's happened...

I decided to clean out my laptop of dust and any fluff that's got inside since my last clean of its insides last summer using Storm3016's fantastic tutorial which can be found here: Clicky!. After opening it up I noticed that there was hardly any dust inside so I came to the conclusion that the increase in temps over the past few months has come from the thermal compound wearing out. Even if that's not the cause I guess it could still do with replacing anyway so I've got some Arctic Cooling MX-3 on order.

As it would take several days for the thermal paste to come I decided to reassemble the laptop to note down the idle and load temps - something I had forgotten to do before disassembling it. On booting up, the graphics were fuzzy which was strange as I hadn't been messing around with anything on the inside at all. I'm hoping it was a coincidence and I have known for some time about the solder issue with some Nvidia GPUs. Anyway, I scouted around the forums (including this one) to see what other people had to say on the problem and this is what I found many had experienced -

(Sorry if this is your picture I'm stealing by the way! )


My display wasn't like that at all - you could still make out things, but the colours were messed up with lots of red and green and there were different coloured artifacts on the screen. I tested to see what would happen on an external display connected by VGA and that was fine with no problems whatsoever. Somehow I found out that tapping the laptop made the LCD display alright again and then tapping it again made it go back to being weird. I narrowed this down to tapping the keyboard around the as/zx area and dissassembled the laptop again to see what was underneath that area.

I found out that those keys are directly above the LVDS connector to the LCD display so I fiddled around with the connector to make sure it had not come loose and booted up again, but it was exactly the same as before. On the other side of the motherboard to the LVDS connector is the GPU itself. Due to the tapping and pressing in the region needed to temporarily remedy the problem I decided that something might have been coming loose from the GPU side of the motherboard so I tightened the GPU and northbridge heatsink as hard as I dared - it was already pretty tight, and booted up again. This time the display was back to normal.

I decided to load the GPU by playing some games to see how it would react and perform and found that after 5 minutes or so once it got above 60-65 degrees the colours would go weird again. I flicked to the desktop to see if it was fuzzy there as well, but it was fine. Back to the game, and it had fuzzy colours. I did this several times and came to the conclusion that my GPU didn't like 3D applications any more. Fair enough - although it would be nice, I can live with not gaming on my laptop.

So here comes the next problem - when I was playing with the graphics to try and make it work, I didn't completely reassemble my laptop each time I wanted to boot up. Instead I just slid the hard drive back in but left other things such as the BD drive out - the BD drive had been removed throughout the whole testing process. I decided to see how the graphics would perform when playing a blu-ray disc so shut down, slid the BD drive in and booted up again. I then found that the BD drive was dead, i.e. even the tray would not open.

Next, I went into the BIOS to see if it was listed there, and having an extremely simple BIOS I found that it didn't list what drives were connected. I also found that the drive was dead while in the BIOS as well so it's definitely a hardware problem. I rebooted and paused on the POST screen to find that the drive wasn't listed there either, while the hard drive was.

My next thought was that booting up without an optical drive might have triggered something in the BIOS to say that my laptop model doesn't come with an optical drive so it shouldn't look for one. I therefore decided to clear the CMOS as a last resort. This failed - the drive is still dead.

So now I have a half-working graphics card and a possibly dead BD drive? I know that Sony are offering free motherboard replacements for models with faulty GPUs ( Clicky!) and it is applicable to my FZ21M, however, if they find that the problem is not the known Nvidia issue caused by melting solder, they will force you to pay £150 (I'm from the UK if you didn't already work out from my spelling of colour ) just for having them diagnose it, before they even start any repairs! I'm not sure if I'm experiencing the same graphics problem that other people have as my display when it goes wrong is not really like the photos and videos I've seen of the Nvidia solder issue.

Anyway, the reason that I've come to this forum is for advice on either of the problems - what do you recommend I should try next for both the GPU and BD drive? Have any of you experienced these issues in the past or can you offer any advice? Checking what I've just typed, sorry if that was a lot to read!

Oh, and here are my FZ21M's spec's, not that most of them matter. (If you know the model you might notice that the only upgrade I've done is the hard drive after the original one showed signs of it dying.) :

Sony VAIO FGN-FZ21M
Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2GHz, 2MB cache)
2x Hynix branded 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM sticks
Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 2.5" hard drive (WD3200BJKT)
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT with 256MB GDDR3 DRAM
Mat(insert 4-letter word beginning with 's')a UJ-120 BD combo drive
and it's currently running the OEM supplied Windows Vista Home Premium x86

Thank you all very much for any help you can possibly offer.

Raymond

 

Your GPU had failed. Go here for more details VAIO Support Europe

There is a sticky at the top of the forum http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/407410-sony-comes-clean-faulty-nvidia-chips.html

 

Thank you very much for your swift reply. I thought this might have been the case, but wasn't too sure, as I've already mentioned due to my screen not looking like that of others with the issue. From the link you have given, I'm guessing Sony will fix it for free in the UK (can anyone from the UK confirm this and/or give an account of their experience with the service?). Any thoughts on the issue with the blu-ray drive though?

 

I hate to double post, but I thought I'd just give this a bump to see if anyone else has any suggestions or solutions to the dead blu-ray drive.

Also, I'm just wondering how it can be so definite that my GPU has failed as a result of the infamous solder issue: as already mentioned in my first post I still get a normal output from the VGA port on the laptop; when my graphics go wrong it doesn't look like any of the pictures I've seen of the solder-caused problem around this forum; and I havn't experienced any of the BSODs or driver issues that others with solder-caused GPU failures have experienced.

Sorry to perhaps seem a little doubtful, but I would absolutely hate to part with £150 if I send my laptop to Sony and they find that the graphics problem is not caused by Nvidia's poor choice of solder material.

 

Turns out I was right to be doubtful with the lack of evidence as the GPU has not failed at all.

After receiving no further replies on this thread I decided to contant Sony and I had my laptop collected for the motherboard to be replaced. The mandatory diagnosis that was carried out by the engineer ahead of any work revealed that the GPU was operating normally and that it was the cable from the motherboard to the LCD display that was faulty - in fact, it may actually be the inverter that is faulty, but the lady in the call centre didn't go into much technical detail. The BD-Drive is also dead and Sony want to charge over £250 ($390) just to replace those two parts.

As you can imagine at that price, I'm pretty annoyed that I was led to believe it was a GPU failure, but I suppose that's just the way things happen.

To return the laptop with no repairs it is going to cost £55 ($85) alone and I can bid for the correct (I think) used parts on eBay to do a DIY job. I'm just after a good recommendation on what would be the most advisable step to take now - pay up for the repairs or pay for the laptop to be sent back.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

Bump...

 

Final bump...