VAIO not even going to bootloader

I made an account on this site for the sole purpose of posting this thread... my girlfriend's younger sister has this Vaio VGN-NW270F laptop and I guess through crazy downloads and all sorts of things like that she had gotten a trojan of some sort I'm guessing and now the laptop won't even boot up.

Plain and simple, they gave the laptop to me to fix, and whenever I simply press the power button to turn on the laptop it just shows me a blank screen (zero activity) and a bit of dvd-drive ramblings and then shuts back down.

The laptop is fully charged, and my sister has the same vaio just without the blu-ray drive and I've tried using her battery, tried running the laptop off AC power only, tried booting with the cd drive opened/closed, tried booting with a bootable windows 7 flash drive, tried booting with F2/F10/F11 held and spammed and there is simply nothing.

I know when you turn on a normal vaio laptop it'll show you the little VAIO insignia and then go into Windows' bootloader, but this laptop doesn't even look like it turns on the monitor at all.

I tried booting it while a VGA connection was plugged into my own monitor and its not receiving any signal.

I just have NO clue what's going on with this guy, any help at all would be great. The laptop's only been through around 6 months of life, but it was in a child's hands for the most part and I'm pretty sure the entire software is corrupt. Thanks

 

If you haven't tried it yet, I'd try hooking up the system to an external monitor, if you see absolutely nothing on the screen. If you get no output from an external monitor, I'd break out the screwdriver, and starting with a RAM reseat, check each component individually.

 

i have a vga plugged into it right now, and when i boot i still get no signal on my monitor and of course no activity on the actual screen itself either, anything else im missing/not pressing/etc?

 

Very strange, I had a Vaio (around 2006) which displayed the same problem. I never really had the machine looked into. I was mad at the machine because it happened on an overseas trip and I was in serious trouble because of the issues with the laptop. I had to buy another el cheapo machine just for a week of use before I returned home. The Vaio is still with me, but I am hesitating doing anything with it - it was a single core machine - though I think it would run Win 7 quite well. Ever since this experience, I have (perhaps unfairly) given up on Sony machines. Oh and btw, this happened exactly a day after the warranty expired!

 

Well here's sorta an update...

I went the screw driver route and i unscrewed the Hard drive pocket and i saw nasty spots of dust on that guy, so just like the olden days with the NES system I blew at the connectors and hard drive connectors as if they were a cart from back in '95.

After a few tries the vaio decided to boot and then freeze about 4 or 5 times... The sixth time i hooked on a bootable windows 7 thumb drive and believe it or not I finally see the "Windows is loading files" status bar thank god... so I go through the procedure and right now it's installing Windows again... by the way gave her hard drive a nice toasting and formatted the whole damn thing, buh-bye adware filled video chat programs and justin beiber wallpapers

 

Ok. Booted into a fully installed Windows 7 reinstalled on a freshly formatted partition of the HDD, eventually froze right on the main screen. Rebooted, got this error:

BOOTMGR image is corrupt. The system cannot boot.

I'm guessing the bios/boot manager had gotten defunct due to a virus/trojan etc, so how to fix this? Though the bootup disc?

 

If you did a full reinstall of windows, it sounds like you might have a failing hard drive. I would run any hard drive diagnostic software you happen to have on hand - Ultimate Boot CD has some decent tools if you don't yet have it in your toolkit, and drive manufacturers usually have some bootable utilities to check their own drives for issues. Additionally, I'm not too familiar with Sony Vaio systems, but there may be a hard drive test option within the BIOS menus - I've often seen this on HP and Dell notebooks. If there are any hardware diagnostics available within the bios/boot menus, I'd run all of them.

 

-> I'd rather say broken HDD.

Try a new HDD and that will most likely fix your problem, and no, no malware at all.

 

You sure itd be the HDD if its giving me that BOOTMGR error? I thought a fresh install of Windows 7 wouldn't effect the BIOs of the laptop.

Anyways what's also weird is that the laptop sometimes doesn't like booting at all (even displaying manufacturer's logo) when the optical drive is closed sometimes too.

And the other weird thing is that if it seems that its fine, aka at least the manufacturer's logo comes on, if I even move the laptop in the slightest way the screen completely goes dark yet I can still hear some activity.

 

The BOOTMGR is stored on the hard drive. All the BIOS does is initialize hardware then pass control to the boot manager that is found on a specific location on the hard drive.

If it flakes out when you move it, it could be that there are some connections loose inside the machine, or a short. Perhaps she didn't get a virus but spilled something on it and didn't want to 'fess up.

 

Lmao, very well possible... I have a friend whos recommending opening up the casing to the three pin jumper on the motherboard, i guess while im in there ill check the connection to the monitor too. Any idea about the jumper? Is that the hardware reset button or something along the lines of that?

 

Try to access BIOS to see what's going on in there. For this you have to hit F2 repeatedly at the first screen you see after reboot. I'm not aware of any jumpers on the motherboard, it's not a desktop. You could locate and disconnect the CMOS battery if you've taken apart the laptop. What's the story with the bootmanager? Did this laptop have more than one operating system installed? Try re-installing Windows and erase all partitions before the install.

 

I had a no-boot issue with my vaio a few weeks ago. I was thinking of sending it in for warranty when I read online about doing this:
- unplug AC charger and remove battery.
- hold power button down for 30 sec.
- release power button, install battery, connect AC charger.
- boot.

I don't know why but this worked and my vaio has been fine since.
hope this helps.

 

Well...I was advised the same thing and for a while it worked. And then it happened again and since then it has not started up. So, I gave up on it. If I remember correctly, I was able to retrieve some of the data off the HDD, but not all of it.

 

It's very easy to fix:

Fixing "BOOTMGR is missing" Error While Trying to Boot Windows 7 or Vista - How-To Geek

 

That's a mainboard discharge in case any static electricity on the mainboard causes an issue.
-> It won't fix a hardware issue.