sony viao pcg-9w1m does not start

Vaio Model ?PCG-9W1M on base? but just below the LCD: model VGN-BX197XP

Hi all,
I received a sony vaio pcg-9w1m laptop today for repair. The laptop would not start after a car journey, implying damage, but I can't see any physical damage. When I pressed the power button a number of LEDs flashed, I heard the disk spin very briefly, and then stop ... then nothing.

I removed the power cord, the memory and the battery and pressed the power button for over a minute. I connected the power cable again, tried to boot up, there was no change.

On this laptop there are a number of LEDs. Two LEDs flash once on the front panel .. the power LED and the battery LED.

However when I tried to boot initially on receiving the laptop, 3 LEDs next to the power button also flashed, but after 2 or three failed attempts these LEDs no longer flash once, only the LEDs on the front panel.

I checked the power cable with a multi-meter and it was providing power OK.

any ideas?

 

There are actually quite a number of reasons for the blinking...

If the power LED is blinking, then maybe the battery? Have you tried starting with the battery removed?

This issue can also happen if the CMOS battery is dead (those button cells within the machine).

How many RAM sticks does your machine come with? If two, remove one and try starting with just one in the machine. Do this with both RAM sticks. A dead RAM stick on a computer / lappy can cause such issues where the thing doesn't power up (minus the HDD and fan).

 

Thanks for the reply,
The LEDs only blinked once on pressing the power button. At the same time the hdd spun up and down in less than a second. So although the laptop was getting power it was totally failing to even begin to boot.

I did try removing the memory stick as I mentioned in my first post, but there was no change.

Something I discovered later was: this laptop was emitting a barely audible high pitched whine, as long as either the power cable or the battery was connected. ( removing both power sources ended the noise as you might expect)

The noise is only heard by pressing ear to laptop vents on the underside or to an opening in the laptop such as a USB port.

I expected there to be no noise at all when I removed the battery as I figured the barely audible sound might be created in the battery charging cycle. However, with only the power cable attached, or only the battery inserted, the sound was present. The sound was slightly higher pitched when both battery and power cable were connected.

I did not check the CMOS battery, and since I have abandoned this laptop to the professionals, or the breakers, (given it back the the owner) I don't know if that would have been part of the problem. In the past when I have found a dead CMOS battery in another laptop, it only messed up the BIOS settings, it didn't prevent it booting up.

Any ideas regarding the sound will be appreciated, although it's academic now .. until the next time