Sony Vaio VPCEE3WFX will not power on.

[Bruneor257]

First off thanks for any help and for reading the thread.

I have a Sony Vaio Laptop. Model VPCEE3WFX. After a few blue screens and reboots I can no longer get the laptop to power up.

Things I do have:

When I press the power button I get a green light for about 2 seconds then the light goes off.

I have an orange light next to the Battery icon.
I have a green light on the Sony AC power adapter.

Things I do not have:

I do not hear any CPU fans turn on.
I do not hear a POST.
I do not hear a hard drive spinning.
I do not see any light on the LCD screen.

Things I have tried:

I contacted Sony Support Chat and they linked to here: http://www.kb.sony.com/selfservice/documentLink.do?externalId=C1026553

So I have followed those steps.
I have disconnected and reconnected the Battery.
I have unplugged and reconnected the RAM memory.
I have tried to connect the AC into the computer without the battery pack connected.

I am afraid I have a MOBO or hardware issue that will require an expensive Sony repair.

Does anyone know of any more trouble shooting steps I can do to find the problem?

 

[szaboaz]

That's a pretty tough case.

Knowing how it started, it sound very much like a hardware error which got worse and worse to the point it prevents anything now.

The old error searching method is this: change something, watch carefully. Repeat.
The troubleshooting tips really cover most of the possible causes. Maybe you can also try:
- remove all the ram. Try to start. Any beeps? Anything different?
- remove the HDD. Try to start. Any beeps? Anything different?
- I can't think anything else now you can easily remove...


One thing that got me thinking was the list of issues that the latest (downloadable) BIOS upgrade is supposed to resolve:
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VPCEE3WFX&upd_id=6330&os_group_id=6

"Hang and freeze", "black screen at startup". They don't explain, how and when exactly these happen, so I can't be sure if this has anything to do with your case.

*If* they do, a BIOS update would be something worth to try. However, the only possible way for updating the BIOS would be a "BIOS recovery", and unfortunately it seems, that the method for Sony Vaios is not known. I've searched for it, found requests, found suggestions in BiOS-mod forums like mydigitallife.info forums, but nowhere a success report. Some even suggested that Sony disabled it, some think that it's there, but noone had found it yet.


I downloaded the BIOS from the website above, I extracted the BIOS file from that executable with Universal Extractor ( http://legroom.net/software/uniextract ) in a two step process, which resulted the following file:
ISBSYS-00243219-1040.EXE\TEMPEXEFOLDER\EP0000243219\R0200Z5.ROM 2 097 152 2011.01.11 07:49 -a--

Usually the recovery has two "unknowns":
- the name of the BIOS file, which has to be copied on a FAT32 formatted usb pendrive. This can be the one it comes out with: "R0200Z5.ROM", but there are several variations.

- the key (or key combination) you have to keep pressed down during the whole startup, with the usb pendrive attached.


Hmm... now that I try to find the page that I found yesterday, I came across a message which tells about a successful flash recovery with a VAIO:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/32641-Problems-with-BIOS-Mod-for-the-SONY-VAIO-VPC-YB1S1E-S
(AND! it's a fresh one too, you may want to join that forum, and try to contact/Private Message that person, "Turbostaater" for the exact steps he had success with.)

It references this step-by-step method description:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/13095-Undocumented-INSYDE-BIOS-recovery-method-Use-andy-s-tool-to-obtain-possible-names

If you want to give it a go, and you need further assistance, say so. I'm not a big expert, but have done this before on a Dell computer, and I helped a guy once with a bricked ASUS laptop here, on Tomshardware too ( http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/74604-20-asus-u52f-turn ) . That was a big success, I wish you the same.