Z1 /Sony flashed the Advanced BIOS under a warranty repair

Most of the time I love the sony Z-series and sometimes hate it.
This is easily understandable when you really take care of it, protect it as much as possible, and though, has been four time repaired in less than 2 years. Fortunately in my country warranty length a minimum of two years.

The first repair was about a hinge issue, they even replaced the LCD.
The second repair was for a blocked pixel line... the LCD was replaced obviously. Since the LCD screen had been replaced, the GT 330M had stopped working... I simply couldn't switch to SPEED mode, the screen would turn black then turn off. However Windows 7 always well recognized the GT 330M. There has never been any indications it wasn't working correctly.
I once tried to attach an external display. Miracle, the nvidia GPU is working again, it switches like it should but for some reason only work with external display. I though there was a connector that was unplugged but I was told there's only one connector, so if the intel HD works it should works too for the nvidia GPU... So I guessed the problem came from the LCD or something else but not from my GPU.

I've waited a long time to call sony again because I didn't need the GT 330M as I was using my much more powerful eGPU.
When I finally called sony, the guy who listened to my problems believed as well the problem has nothing to do witeh the nvidia GT 330M but with the screen.

Before UPS coming, to bring the computer to a sony repair center, I had placed between the screen and the keyboard a description of the problem, I mentioned that the nvidia card was working very well as soon as I plug an external monitor.

It looks like they didn't even take the time to read my paper. They have replaced some motherboard parts including the CPU and the GPU. But when it came back to me the problem was not fixed at all.
I got quite angry when I notice there were a lot of new scratches on the lid chassis...
I hated them for that. And their damn standard letter annoyed me too. You know the one that says the sony repair services are the greatest of the world. What a professional repair, useless replacements, long waiting time, many scratches, nothing solved.
One the technical paper there was something else that was weird.
"Bios reconfiguration" so I looked in my bios and noticed it was the advanced bios I had backed it up to the original and unmodified bios! I though it was probably because there was an option that save a bios image on SSD like some desktop motherboard can do, but there's nothing like this in the Z1 advanced bios features

I was about to send an email to the general sony manager, the one who signed the damn standard letter. But the sony center called me to make sure my computer was repaired. When they listened to me they offered me a new repair...

4th time it is repaired, I was so disappointed at that moment that I didn't my Z1 anymore but a new laptop.. but to me there's truly nothing as exciting as the Z1, execpt the Z2. But there's nothing more expensive... "Wait Z2, it's from Sony ? do I really like Sony or hate it ? Both..." that's what I thought

I wanted to restore my bios to the original and unmodified bios I was a bit afraid they call me and tell me "your warranty void because you modified bios".
When I had everything ready to flash my bios and when I entered "flash!t BACKUP.ROM /f" I got a message I never had before, saying something like a "missing permission"
It looks like sony flashed an advanced bios... I could save this bios though but I can't flash it anymore. And they didn't take into account I had an advanced bios and my computer had finally been repaired. They only replaced the LCD connector. All the previous replacement were likely useless

Nevertheless I'm happy to have my computer back and working. But there are still these damn scratches, and I still want a Z2. However I do not want to renounce to my Z1 :/ I want to get a new lcd chassis.

I still seriously consider to write to Kris De Pauw the general manager of sony europe, because this is way too much disappointing...

 

That's as succinct and accurate a description of the Z as there is.

That's as succinct and accurate a description of Sony as there is.