Vaio Z540 shuts down when moved/shaken

Hello,

I have a Sony Vaio Z540 that is having some problems. When the laptop is shaken or moved hard, it shuts down. Sometimes the screen will also become just a bunch of random horizontal lines.
Has anyone had this problem?

I'm trying to take the laptop apart now, but I'm stuck at the part where I remove the camera and speaker cables. They are these tiny connectors with wires coming out of them horizontally, but the service manual says to pull them up vertically. How do I do that? Will the cables hold?

Thanks!

 

Sounds like it might be a graphics issue if you are getting artifacts, the Nvidia chipset might being coming off slightly (Some of the BGA solder points may be cracked)
If you can get it apart try reseating the cables, but if that doesnt work its likely to be a board problem

 

I had a somewhat similar problem on my SZ45. When the device got "hit" or shaken at a particular spot, the machine hangs. This happens on both Speed and Stamina settings. I did quite a number of troubleshooting, i.e. re-installing the OS, changing RAMs, HDD, disabling Wireless, disabling the NIC and using an expresscard NIC, etc etc. I could only deduce that it was due to a faulty motherboard.

Since Sony here had a trade in offer i couldn't refuse, i chunk the old bugger and got meself a brand new Z127