Vaio pro 13 doesn't boot

Hi

After a couple of times opening up the laptop and cleaning/greasing the fan, I decided to buy a new fan this time. My daughter (17 yo), who owns the laptop, made it herself this time and I thought everything looked fine afterwards, I couldn't see any visible problems with the job.

However, the power LED just kept looping in a blink, 5 sec pause, blink, and so on, and ˜30 apart, the backlight of the keyboard lit up briefly. This was fixed by resetting the BIOS. I removed the main battery plus the small backup battery and pressed the power button for 20 sec. I've seen a similar procedure for other Vaios so I tried it here to. So now, the blinking is gone, but when I turn it on, the power LED stays lit, but the laptop doesn't seem to boot. Black screen, no HDMI output and it doesn't connect to our WiFi router. After a minute, the fan starts though, dead quiet!

I then tried to remove the SSD, no difference.

I removed the heatpipes from the CPU to check the thermal paste, and she had put on a bit much, so some of it touched a couple of the connectors on the top of the CPU board. I removed everything and put on new paste but it still doesn't boot when I start it.

I know it's an old laptop and it's probably time for a new one, but it's a bit annoying and it would feel good for her to get it working again.

Any suggestions?

 

Did you try swapping back the old fan?

One of the fan's wires is used to report back the rpm frequency to the system. If this signal is missing or in the wrong range then the bios/ec may refuse to start the system.

If you want the fan to run more quietly then you might simply re-grease it, rather than buying a new one. Usually it just needs a new drop of oil.

 

Thanks for the tip.

I did think about it the other day but never tried it. I swapped it back now though but unfortunately it didn't help.

Yes, we have opened it up for re-greasing 3-4 times, and it helps for a while but every time we do it, the time until it starts acting up again decreases, so I thought a new one could give it some more life.

 

Re-insert ram, cpu and cables. Sounds like a simple poor connection after the disassembly. As long as the paste isn't a conductive one (liquid metal) then there's no such thing as too much paste, so there's no reason to clean it up further.

Could also check the bottom cover is properly in place. I've seen some systems that use a physical switch on the motherboard that is flipped once the cover is in place; these won't start with the cover removed or when not properly seated. Really stupid design, but there you go.