Vaio FW Broken LCD Barrel Hinge

Well I knew it would happen sooner or later - the hinge on the left side of my Vaio FW290 laptop just broke, and it's conveniently 1 month after my warranty ended - not that they would have covered it anyways, they probably would have called it physical damage and not under warranty. The hinge is completely seperate from the body and it just flops around, and that's not good considering it is where the power cord plugs into the laptop. I want to replace it, and I have no problem doing it myself, but I don't know exactly what part(s) to get. babb

I know this is a common problem with this model, so I was hoping someone else here has repaired theirs and could tell me what parts I need. I found a place that sells virtually every replacement part imaginable: http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,Vaio,VGN-FW290,Laptop,Parts.aspx. I guessing that the part I need is one of these two:

HINGE LEFT: http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,Laptop,Part,A1561698A.aspx
LCD BKT LFT: http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,Laptop,Part,387360702.aspx
LCD HINGE COVER-LFT: http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Sony,Laptop,Part,387357201.aspx

 

Actually, after inspecting it more closely it looks like it's not the hinge that is broken, it's just the barrel cap that covers the power outlet. The hinge cover looks like it is a seperate barrel piece which is on the inside of the end barrel cap and that is attached to the LCD. The piece that I broke is the outer barrel cover which looks like it is just attached to the main body of the laptop, but not the hinge or the LCD cover.

 

Nobody has made an attempt to fix one of those broken barrel covers on their own? I know a lot of people have had it break because I've seen it posted many times. Are you guys paying to have Sony fix it, or are the covering it under warranty?

 

I also own a sony Vaio FW, the barrel where the AC adaptor plugs into feels loose..

Why the hell did I spend so much money on something designed to fail?
the casing of the "barrel" or whatever the hell it is can be pushed in and doesn't feel secure, it feels like over time it will just snap off and bust the machine.. I'm sending it back to sony and if they don't fix it then sod them.. It cost me over a grand and I bought it in October 2009.

 

That's exactly how mine was. The outer barrell piece on the left side always felt loose, and then it eventually developed a small crack in it which made it looser and then it finally just broke completely. The problem is that it's held onto the body by a small thin piece of plastic, and if you carry your laptop in a backpack (like I do) and you put that side at the bottom then it puts a lot of strain on that piece because the laptop's weight is resting on it. I'm guessing that's how mine got its inital crack. But it broke by someone lightly bumping the corner of it which was hanging off the side of my desk. So it was my fault, but a high-end laptop like this should not be designed to break so easily. The finish is also completely worn off my palm rest and touchpad buttons, and there are 2 spots to the right & left of the touchpad where the LCD cover rubs on it when closed and the paint is worn of there as well. I've had this laptop for just over a year, and it's already more beat up than my last HP laptop which I had for 5 years! Overall, I am very disappointed with every physical aspect of this laptop, although it does perform nicely.

 

Do you have a messenger I could contact you at?
Do you think I should contact Sony if the barrel feels loose?

 

It seems like you have been on here complaining about that issue ever since the day you bought it. If you didn't like that the hinge was loose from day 1, why didn't you just return it and get something else? I'm not trying to be rude by saying that, but if I bought something and I immediately noticed something that I didn't like about it I would return it and get something else.

My hinge didn't end up feeling loose until about 8 months after I bought it, and then it finally broke about a month after the warranty expired, so I have no option but to replace it myself. You could send it back and try to have them "fix" your loose hinge, but I'm not sure they would admit that there's anything to fix if it's not actually broken. Your best bet might be to just break it intentionally and then send it in for repair, if you are so concerend about it. If you don't want to do that, then all you can do is wait and see if it eventually breaks, and if it does just hope it does so during your wraranty period. That being said, when they fix it they're just going to put the same hinge on there, so you'll probably end up having issues with the repaired hinge too. I need to fix mine because it is completely broken and hangning from a wire off the side of my laptop, but if mine were just loose I wouldn't worry about it until it breaks.

 

I'm just wondering, cannot it just be glued back using a tiny bit of superglue?

 

mine was the same, busted right off; i returned it to the reseller

 

I've got exactly the same issue and found this thread looking on the internet for a solution....I have taken the barrel cap off and it looks like the power socket is attached via small piece of metal to the main chassis of the laptop. I was going to try and dissemble the laptop and glue it bck but if anybody knows of a better way it would be great to know
thanks in advance

anthony

 

I've sent mine to sony repair centre, wish me luck.

 

Sony repaired my vaio in days, the barrel feels much more secure

 

I just have the same thing happened to my laptop and would like to know how much did you pay for the repair, and what was the turn around time.
Thanks

Byron

 

barrel is loose and laptop wont stay up without being propped. i have the vaio AW. so lame. have had it for a year. i too wanna know how much a sony repair would cost, or if and how to fix it myself.

 

Wow, do you know how it got to that point? was it like it from day of purchase?

 

It was a free fix from Sony (was within warranty)

 

happened over time i think - never thought id have to worry about hinges on a high end laptop like most people. I tried opening up the back of my laptop to see what these hinges looked like, but got nervous after screw 20 and tryin to pry it open. i dont wanna break anything else. my guess is a sony out of warranty fix for this runs 300 or 400.

 

Do you remember when you got this machine? do you remember how it became loose? was it like that from day of purchase?

Describe how wobbly the hinges/barrels are, do they move freely? do you push them? any creaks or cracks?

 

got the computer over a year ago, ive never felt the hinges loose, left the computer open over night, and wham the computer was almost horizontal when i woke up. no cracks i can see, the computer moves freely like there are no hinges, it wont stay up by itself. its like if i grab both the barrels from the top and bottom the computer will stay up, but like i really have to hold them tight. both hinges wiggle around a little. Any ideas? thanks

 

It sounds like the barrels on your machine are bust, how did the AW end up in a horizontal position? why not send your AW in for repair? is it still under warranty? (some places are covered by standard 2 year warranty)

 

I'm having the same problem as the OP, but with a FW11E. I have contacted Sony, and they say a fix would cost at least £225, which is ridiculous.

Anyway I would like to be enlightened as to how to fix this, and more importantly which parts are involved so at least I can buy them.

Thanks in advance

 

I know this thread is pretty old, but I finally got around to attempting to fix my broken hinge. I disassembled my entire laptop, all the way down to the motherboard, and I discovered that the hinge broke off a part that is a permanent piece of the entire top portion of the laptop (called the palmrest). I tried gluing it - I used epoxy, gorilla glue, JB weld - but nothing would hold permanently. So then I started searching around for a replacement palmrest and found the correct part number:

P/N: X23181224 (also compatible with X-2318-1224, X-2318-122-1, X-2318-122-3)
Description: M760 Palmrest Touch Pad MGATE 3-873-573

This part is the entire top palmrest assembly (the piece that the motherboard is mounted to) and it will require swapping the ENTIRE INSIDE CONTENTS of your laptop - I'm talking motherboard, USB ports, speakers, power button, hinge barrels, etc, etc. It's not an easy job, but it's the only way to fix this defect. I already have mine stripped down, but I don't know how in the world I'm going to figure out how to put it all back together with all these tiny screws. I may just end up buying the part and taking it to a local Sony service center and ask how much they would charge to put it all back together. But the part alone is $100-$150 depending on where you look, and most places don't even have it in stock.

I hope this info helps, and good luck to others who have had this same problem. Sony should step up here and fix what is obviously a defect in the design, whether it happens during the warranty period or not!

 

how does it all stand?

 

I know this is an old post but somebody might benefit from this.
It is a known issue that the barrel caps on both ends of any VGN-FW laptop tend to get loose and eventually break off especially the left one (power jack).

This is because inside, there is just a small piece of plastic holding each one in place. After about a year of having this laptop my power jack got loose to the point that i could tell it was just clinging by the wire. This is due to a faulty design, after hooking and unhooking the laptop power cable a good number of times(and maybe accidentally tripping over the cable once) this will inevitably happen, it just depends how you treat your laptop but i can assure you this will happen.

By the time this happens, most of us will be out of warranty and sony will want to charge you around 300$ to fix it(yeah, its ridiculous).

The way to fix this is:
1) gluing the broken part back together or
2) replacing the whole plastic part that encapsulates the keyboard and palmrest on the laptop. Even though this part is not crucial to have in one piece, its not that simple to replace and is pricey.

So I went with option 1. I didn't have a service manual and wouldn't pay Sony 10$ for it so i had to reverse engineer how to get the bottom black part off the laptop. When I say the bottom black part I mean the whole bottom part to the laptop that basically covers the bottom part of the system board. If you flip your laptop and look at it from under, its that whole black thing.

I had to remove everything first(that is, from underneath the laptop). RAM, Optical drive, Hard Drive and all the screws I could find (there's no hidden screws really). Once I removed everything the black part seemed loose enough. There's a couple of plastic clips that hold it in place but if you carefully pull (starting from the optical drive side) you will successfully take the whole thing off.

After that you will immediatelly see what is broken on the barrell and what to glue. Its not actually part of the barrel, its actually part of the chassis that goes into the barrel and the barrel is actually screwed into it. I used krazy glue and let it stand for 15 minutes before putting everything back together and powering it on. It has been holding fine so far(its been a week), if this breaks again then I will try something stronger, but believe me, there is no point in getting this fixed by Sony out of warranty because this will happen again. Your best bet is to open it up and glue it together with something that will make it stronger.

Unfortunately I didn't think of taking pictures till I put everything back together so sorry, I know pics might have made this easier but trust me, if you are careful, this is not a hard thing to do. Just make sure you have krazy glue and a small Phillips screwdriver, mine had a magnetic tip which made everything easier.

* * If you actually snapped the whole barrel off, then you might need to replace the cable, I don't think Sony sells the cable on its own but you can get it as part of the barrel (just Google Sony Vaio VGN-FW 073-0001-4504_B Assembly)

Hope this helps. I searched for how to do this for a good 4 hours on a Saturday and failed to find a solution so I came up with this. Screw the 300$ charge!

 

My Sony SZ hinges broke 8 months after I had the machine and than both hinges broke 3 other times.Fortunately I was under warranty, but the build quality on these machines is not good. the key pad had to be replaced also.

At the price Sony charges these units should be trouble free for three years.

Now some posters on here get upset if you say anything is wrong with Sony since they overpaid like I did , but don't want to admit it.

Everyone is paying for the name and nothing else

My warranty is up and wont be buying another Sony again

 

I bought my Vgn-fw21e on 12/29/2008. About a year later I dropped my vaio under the coffee table and the barrel hinge broke. I unscrewed the Vaio to fix it, but I couldn't do much, so I put some glue all around the hinge from the outside... visible with the naked eye. However, the problem remained, but still I didnt want to contact Sony because it was physical damage, plus they would notice I had it opened and I was afraid that I would have to pay for the repair.
On 12/20/2010 my hard disk failed, so I had no other option than to send it to Sony Service (on December 23rd) as my warranty would expire a week later. When they contacted me I also told them about the barrel and I also asked for a screen replacement. Dust underneath the screen and dead pixels had appeared six months after I bought it, really frustrating! Too many problems for such an expensive machine...
Luckily they replaced the broken barrel, the hard disk plus the screen and the plastic around it, with no charge! I just heard the good news, and to be honest I'm surprised that they didnt even mention physical damage.
fyi, Vaio was send from Greece to Frankfurt, then to Prague for repair. It's already travelling back to Greece, I'll have it in 1-2 working days.

 

update: I got it back. Sony service replaced the screen, hard disk, the barrel hinge AND the mouse pad, all the plastic around the keyboard and they loaded the initial OS which I had lost! my vaio is almost brand new!

 

update: 3 months after I got it back, there are 2 dead pixels (or maybe dust?) under the screen. Im really upset!