Vaio vi

September 21, 2005 7:53 AM

My Sony Vaio PCG-K115M won't boot.

About a week ago it started having problems waking from sleep, then I got a warning of a corrupted file. Then it froze (while on askMeta) and ever since refuses to boot, either from the HD or the recovery disk. All I get is the power light, the fan starts, but the screen stays blank. I found this forum with 60 pages of similar problems and have tried some of their tricks (swapping RAM, pressure on the RAM modules etc) with no result. Sony want £50 just to look (it's out of warranty), and the stories on the forum imply that it'll cost a lot more to fix (new motherboard). I am now considering sending it to a repair shop in London, who say they can fix it for £140. Before I do this, does anyone know of any alternatives, whether a neat trick for starting it up (not too complex, I have no desire to take it apart, and no idea what BIOS is for example), a more local repair shop (I am in Edinburgh, Scotland), or a creative use for a dead vaio?

posted by aisforal to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Any beeps from the case when you try to boot? It does sound like a motherboard issue to me.
posted by Who_Am_I at 8:14 AM on September 21, 2005

It doesn't beep. Is that good or bad? The forum seems to suggest that the problem is with the soldering on the memory slots, replacing the motherboard will fix it, but won't be cheap.
posted by aisforal at 8:34 AM on September 21, 2005

Dammit, I didn't notice that this was a laptop that we're talking about. They shouldn't beep at all. Sorry.
Given all the other people with this same problem, it does sound like you will need to replace the motherboard if you decide to keep this particular laptop. 140 pounds == about $250 right? I don't think that's prohibitive to save a laptop. I mean it's either that or buy a new one right?
posted by Who_Am_I at 9:36 AM on September 21, 2005