Computer Trouble; Like a Valentine's Gift from a Bitter Ex Named Nemesis

February 14, 2006 10:40 AM

Dear crafty gnomes of Mefi, riddle me this: my laptop (Vaio PCG-FRV27) just had a fit and died. What may the problem be?

Basically, I cleared cache and pressed ctrl+t in Firefox, and everything just froze—even the cursor was unresponsive. Upon turning it off and on, I saw a Sony/Vaio intro animation, then it got stuck on a blank black screen. So I tried with an Ubuntu LiveCD; same thing—animation (so not a graphics chip problem?), the optical drive spins, and we're stuck at blank screen. Which leads me to wonder:

a) What could be wrong?
b) If, as intuition suggests, the hard drive died, will my precious years of documents, email, and other stuff ever be recoverable?
c) What kind of maintainance costs may I be looking at? I suspect they'll be obnoxious enough that getting a low end hand-me-down from ebay might be better (I just browse/write essays/use email/write php & html+css).
d) Are there web based ftp/sftp/ssh (just for file transfer) clients, because I'm apparently indefinitely relegated to locked-down public computers?
e) More existentially, where does one go to shriek at The Fates that a particular mischief of theirs is absurdly untimely, ridiculously unfair, upsets many plans, and shall absolutely not be countenanced?

Thanks. And yes, I'll be backing up religiously in the future :(

posted by Firas to technology (11 comments total)

Is the BIOS set to boot from the CD first, can you even get to the BIOS?
posted by zeoslap at 10:42 AM on February 14, 2006

Yeah, the boot order starts with CD. I don't remember which function key gets into the BIOS but I can try pressing it during the animation…
posted by Firas at 10:44 AM on February 14, 2006

I haven't used the particular LiveCD you mention, but does it show that's it's probed the hardware at all? Even if it's hanging on detecting a hard drive, you should see some sort of messages. Also, if the hard drive was dead, wouldn't the LiveCD still work eventually, booting you into a diskless mode?

Can you access the BIOS configuration?
posted by clearlynuts at 10:47 AM on February 14, 2006

You could try giving it a good shaking :) Can you remove the hard drive and try booting Ubuntu again?
posted by zeoslap at 10:59 AM on February 14, 2006

Time to muck about with it:
- Disconnect any and all peripherals. Sometimes USB or firewire devices can cause a machine to hang at BIOS start.

- With the power off, pull the battery, hit the power button, and then go get a coffee. Come back and install the battery. Try powering up again.

Find your owners manual, locate the CMOS battery, and remove and replace it.

It sounds to me like something is interfering with the start up process. Sometimes thats peripheral and sometimes that's battery related.
posted by Slap Incognito at 10:59 AM on February 14, 2006

Yeah, sounds like a battery issue to me too. Does it help to run it from AC power?
posted by exogenous at 11:17 AM on February 14, 2006

Make sure you rule out overheating due to a fan that's clogged up with dust... those cans of compressed air work wonders with laptops.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:27 AM on February 14, 2006

If the BIOS is set to boot from the CD, at the very least the Ubuntu bootloader screen should show up. Ubuntu can run with no HD on the machine at all. Seeing as it's not booting, it probably means something other than your HD is toast.

A quick solution to recover the data would be to get a USB-Laptop IDE adapter that lets you plug in your HD to another person's computer.
posted by ori at 11:29 AM on February 14, 2006

Ok,

• Removed the Wifi card that was plugged into PCMCIA
• Can't get into BIOS config (F2)
• No bootable CD works (Ubuntu, Kanotix, Sony's Rescue CD)
• Tried futzing around with battery vs. AC power, including Slap Incognito's sequence
• The fan, well, it's howling as always… but yeah, I've had overheating issues in the past.
• Tried looking for the CMOS battery; couldn't find it. While I was in there I disconnected the HD and gave the rest of the machine a good shake.

ori: interesting. Wonder if there's a way to recover the data via another person's computer without opening the latter up.

I'm very glad that it doesn't sound like a busted HD but concerned that it might be a fried processor… I guess it's time to dig up the Best Buy warranty and see if I'm still covered, and to what extent.
posted by Firas at 3:24 PM on February 14, 2006

This site may offer some tips but little comfort. Discovered after my vaio did something similar. It's a lot of reading. For the record, my vaio is still dead, even after sending it to one of the (UK based) repairers who are mentioned on the forum.
Hope you have better luck. I did recover my data by removing the HD and buying one of those usb enclosure things for it.
posted by aisforal at 5:25 AM on February 15, 2006

So I took it in yesterday and was informed that it wasn't the HD or RAM so it's probably a dead motherboard or some component on it.
posted by Firas at 4:00 PM on June 15, 2006