Vaio SZ blank screen

hey guys
im having this problem with my two year old sony vaio SZ780. i had it on hibernate last night n tried to turn it on this morning: the screen does not turn on. it does not flicker, it does not turn on and then go black. it just never comes on. its not a backlight problem, coz even when i flash a light on the screen, nothing is visible. its completely dead

the power light turns on, the fan turns on, the DVD drive reads. however, the hard drive light flashes just once and does not flash after that. the only lights that remain on are the power and wifi/bluetooth light.

the little LED for the stamina/speed switch does not light up.

i removed/cleaned and reattached the RAM chips. i also tried removing the power plug/battery, holding down the power button for 60 seconds, plugged the power back in and tried again, as found here but no luck

im not very much into hardware so im unsure how to proceed. i do not have an external monitor or TV that i can currently use to check if the computer is working. however, as the hard drive light does not flash, i believe the computer is not booting up or resuming from hibernate.

is there anything i can try? please help! thank u!

EDIT: when the power is on, and i shut the lid, the power and bluetooth light remain on. generally, when the lid is shut, it goes to sleep or hibernate and the lights go out. could this be a problem with the 'sleep button' i dont know how to check it

 

I have had this twice, don't freak out.
I suspect that it has to do with the Intel card over heating, mine happened because it came out of standby while the exhaust port was blocked.

If you are lucky, you can unplug it, and pull the battery, tap the power button and let it sit for maybe 10-30 minutes. This worked for me the second time.

The first time this happened I had to go deeper, much deeper.
You need to reset the bios. To do this you need to open up the computer and pull the bios battery (I have yet to find an easier way). The battery and connector are located underneath the touchpad, and the very front of the system (you can actually see it through the slots on front with a flashlight).

To get to it you have to open the system. If you haven't opened the system before, it can be a bit odd. First unplug and pull the battery, next pull out any memory card if you have any in the slot. Turn it upside down and pull the three screws from the leading edge, and the recessed screw in the very center of the chassis.

Flip it back over and put the screen back a bit out of your way, now take a very thin flathead, and between the keyboard and top button area are two small locking tabs. You can find and push the tabs back (the official way), or just pry the keyboard and plastic away from each other. On mine, it is way easier to just pry, the tabs are difficult to pop open. These tabs are located above the keyboard frame above the outer edge of the F2 key and the inner edge of Insert key. Now pull the screen up to almost vertical, but leaning back just a bit, and you can hook one of keyboard tabs on the wireless switch and lean it against the screen, if you are careful it will not scratch it. This way you don't have to disconnect it, which is a hassle to reconnect.

Under there is 3 small chrome screws at the top, holding the palmrest, undo those, then slide it towards you then lift. Flip it over upside down and lay it where the keyboard sits (this is how I do drive swaps as well). Just left of center along the front edge will be a small battery in shrink wrap connected to a board with a tiny connector (only one there), unplug that for a few seconds, then reassemble. All should work fine once again.

 

thanks so much for ur detailed reply! i will try this as soon as i get back with my laptop and let u know! cheers

 

ur instructions really helped. unfortunately, it didnt work. im kinda lost how to proceed. nothign seems to be working. im hoping its not the motherboard as someone else said

 

Is it switched to Nvida, see if you can get it to come on with Intel. Otherwise, yeah, probably the board or cpu died.

 

yeah, i had it on intel for a while now, the nvidia burnt out some time back. i had some overheating issues, i guess that contributed too. i'll give it to a repair centre n find out exactly wats wrong. i'll letu know, thanks for ur help!

 

Sounds like it's dead, sorry to hear that.

 

I just had exactly the same symptoms, black screen,disk light comes on for 1 sec, disks spin up. Tried resetting the BIOS too, then froze and heated it, nada. Swapped RAM,hard disk removed WIFI still the same. Mobo or graphics or CPU probably.
I've ordered an Asus UL30VT anyway.
I always hated this machine, constant crashes under 7 even after following Leslieann's excellent clean install guides. I think Sony were criminal in not supplying W7 drivers. The battery also died after 14 months of being left on the charger 90% of the time.
I'd just got round to installing W764 too and bought some RAM. If anyone wants any parts let me know, the screen is good as is the WIFI,HDD,ODD touchpad etc etc. The keyboard is Portuguese however.
Overpriced rubbish if you ask me, I'll never buy anything Sony again.

 

While I do love the SZ, and dislike Sony, they have some terrible business practices and have made some bad decisions regarding computers lately, you are possibly putting blame in the wrong places here. Don't take this as me blaming you, I'm just saying there is many more things to consider before you get angry at Sony.



You cannot blame Sony for your constant crashes under Windows 7 (if you followed my guide), the SZ was never made for Windows 7, much less 64bit. Did you seek out help with the problems? Even a bad driver can cause electronics to fail (old crt monitors are especially prone to this), and you were messing around with not only non-approved ones, but on a non-approved O.S. and a different bit version to boot. Yes, many of us have had great luck with it, but we also have to take responsibility that what we are doing could be detrimental to the machine.

Sony has supplied Win 7 software for minimal functionality (took them long enough) but the lack of drivers is disturbing and leads to frustration and possibly bad feelings (me!). However had you only used what they provided, you could blame them. Your machine woudl have run like garbage, but you could blame them. Even after they supplied that software, they claim to not support Windows 7 on that machine though. Which in many ways is true, I wouldn't call what they did support.


Moving on...
How old is your machine? They weren't meant to last forever, the youngest SZ's are coming up on 3 years at this point with some nearing 5.

CPU's rarely fail unless they are overclocked, so it's likely the board, be it graphics or a capacitor, maybe it was bumped one too many times, or the more likely culprit, a power surge. The power packs are not very good at voltage regulation, if you feed them more, they send more, if you feed them less, they send less. This is what often kills computer motherboards and power supplies more than anything else. Line noise also kills parts, any idea how great the wiring is in your home? Ever have it tested? Were you even running a 1000 Joule surge protector (minimum basic protection for electronics)? A mobo failing is hard to pin on the manufacturer, there are too many variables.

As for the battery, while I would like to say you can't really blame Sony as that is normal behavior depending on how you treated your battery (leaving it on the charger all of the time is VERY bad for it), Sony makes all of the batteries pretty much so it's normal behavior for Sony batteries. Li-on batteries like to stay at 50% charge. The further you go away from 50% more or less, the more battery wear you get, hence the reason for Battery Care. Leaving it at 100% on a charger 24/7 is the second worst thing you can do to that battery in terms of use. The only thing worse is letting it go 100% dead. Which by the way only takes a few times to completely kill the battery.

With the age of your machine did you ever checked the thermal compound on any of the heatsinks or test the temperatures? Thermal compound does age and as it does, things can heat up. Did you ever clean out the fan (something Sony made simple)? These were designed to last years, and yours did.

Point is, you put all of your blame on Sony when there are PLENTY of other people/things that deserve at least some of the blame.


I honestly beat the heck out of my SZ, I have reloaded the OS probably 200 times, run Linux, Xp, Vista, Win7, all in 32 and 64bit. I have opened it up countless times, disassembled it entirely 3 times, changed the hard drive dozens of times with 3 different drives, changed the wireless card out several times, changed out the memory, dropped it, knocked it off tables, taken it on trips and to different office totaling 20k miles plus. I have dented the memory cover, dented the base plate, I think maybe even twisted the entire chassis by 1mm. I run it while sitting on beds, on car seats, balancing on one hand, etc (don't do this)... And yet, the darn thing keeps on going. Had this been a cheap Dell, HP, Gateway or one of their brethren, I can only imagine how destroyed it would be by now. To top it off, it spent months as a demo unit in a store. After reading that, I almost feel sorry for it, talk about a rough life.

 

I understand your reasoning but Sony simply should have provided proper W7 drivers that worked. It was a very expensive machine that came pre-loaded with Vista and an awful amount of bloat. I had to buy XP just to get some functionality out of it. When 7 arrived I tried the beta which was not too bad but as it got nearer to the RTM got worse and worse. I was always expecting proper W7 support as the machine was only 18 months old when 7 was released. If they insist on using proprietry drivers then they should keep them updated. Then it finally stopped working when it was 2 years and 8 months old.
It was also so hot I had to have a book underneath it on my lap. I actually looked after it very well and the only visible damage was worn off paint on the trackpoint button and worn off paint on the top corners of the screen. I've disassembled it now and no there wasn't much dust.
The excuse that the Power adaptor isn't very good at regulating voltage is not much of an excuse. Aren't these normally switch mode? You'd expect tighter voltage control on such a sensitive device. The machine was also plugged in through a UPS with surge protection as are all my sensitive electronics.
I had a Samsung X15 that lasted 4 years before under exactly the same circumstances and the battery was still very strong when the on board nVidia chip finally died.
Leslieann, your work with the SZ is amazing and I have installed W7 multiple times because you did the work that Sony didn't, but I will still never buy a Sony product again. Lenovo next time although I have no budget for it now with this premature failure so I've bought a cheap Asus which runs 7 much better. Thanks again Leslieann.

 

Did your SZ come with a sticker claiming Windows 7 compatibility? Fee upgrade? You bought a Vista computer and only a Vista computer. I wish they woudl have done a comprehensive Win7 build, but they weren't required by any means.

The only proprietary drivers are the power system and they do/did update those through Windows driver support. The rest of the drivers are common except for the Texas Instruments card reader and Ricoh camera. Neither of which Sony has control over. Sony isn't the only one to use these parts.

Many manufacturers refuse to call notebooks laptops because using it on your lap is dangerous to not only you, but to the notebook. Laps and beds kill more laptops than you can imagine. Excess heat only causes things to wear out faster.

You may want to look into Lenovo before you buy, some say the only good ones are the T and X series, their entire reputation has hinged on the old Thinkpad designs, not the newer ones. Basically, there are good and bad Lenovos, know before you buy. Even the good ones had some bad periods.


Currently the most reliable notebooks are coming from Toshiba, Asus and Sony (based on insurance rates and I'm not sure I agree 100% but I have to agree for the most part). Supposedly by a significant margin. I wasn't a Toshiba fan until recently, Asus I have seen good things. Sony makes good stuff, but the support system is horrible. That same insurance company put Lenovo near the bottom, which is one of my disagreements with their study, but again, it depends a lot on which model Lenovo.


As for Win7, I started with the betas, the the RTM, and watched as things got worse and worse until I started playing more and more. Which is why the guide worked as will as it did, I solved the issues as they came up as much as I could. A few other forum members filled in the rest.

A LOT of good systems were dumped by thd wayside by companies. Intel still pushes the 855 chipset (or did until recently) in workstations, but provides ZERO Win7 support. Search the internet for the video cards drives for Win7 and you will find TONS of people begging for a driver, which Intel refuses to release. Worse, they made the newer xp driver incompatible with Win7, some of the older ones will still work, but no newer ones. If you think these are shameful acts, you should see what Creative and Nvidia did when Vista was released. Or some of Nvidias other later strategies. They make Sonys WIn 7 support look good.


Again, I'm not blaming you for the Sony failure, just that sometimes things happen. It stinks, but you can't just immediately blame Sony. It sure is easy to though as they really have kind of screwed us in a few ways. Nice way to treat their high end customers.

That being said, will I buy another Sony... I don't know.
For the longest time Sony was the only real game in town for 12 and 13in notebooks, but lately other companies have encroached their territory. Toshiba has the fantastic Portege R700/R705, which I like. Dell, Asus, HP all have upper end models as well that compete quite well in the 13in category like never before. Are they a Z? Nope, but I don't really need a Z and they cost half the price.... But I still drool for a Z. Sony is still King in this category, but it's getting a bit crowded.