# Sony Vaio boot failure, no bios screen



## rsuddath (Sep 29, 2008)

I have a Vaio TX series laptop that was working normally until last week.

Whe I tried to power it on, I could hear the DVD as well as the HD power up but no sustained activity. There was no "vaio" startup screen or audio/beeps. The battery light blinks and the power light was on.

Troubleshooting:
1) the computer will power off when the power button is held down for several seconds
2) connecting to a external monitor makes no difference
3) it made no sense to try other boot options (from cd) because I could not even get to the bios setup screen
4) I dis-asembled the computer and attempted booting with the wireless LAN, HD, DVD, USB, PCMCIA etc disconnected and still no difference
5) when left on for 30 min, the CPU fan does come on and the heatsink gets hot
6) twice (early on, out of 20 or more attempts) the computer did boot up to windows but froze after a minute or so

Is it true as a general rule that if it appears the display is intact, that a failure to get the bios startup screen is due to a motherboard failure (this computer uses the integrated chipset graphics)?

A quick search of this forum yielded what appears to be identical problems with other vaio laptops (links below), none of the issues appear resolved...

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f108/sony-vaio-will-not-power-on-285165.html#post1671420

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f108/sony-vaio-vgn-fs315m-will-not-boot-up-284251.html#post1666851

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f108/vgn-c290-wont-boot-282838.html#post1660399

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f108/sony-vaio-vgn-b1vp-wont-boot-283069.html#post1661509

http://www.techsupportforum.com/f108/vaio-vgn-fz21s-wont-boot-278124.html#post1637159

Thank you for any suggestions or help that you might be able to provide.


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## sobeit (Nov 11, 2007)

if everything sounds like its working but just no screen, then it could be bad ram.


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## rsuddath (Sep 29, 2008)

if it is bad RAM, that would have to be the RAM that is soldered to the motherboard...

does this mean the next step would be a motherboard replacement?


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## sobeit (Nov 11, 2007)

if its the soldered ram, it might be replaceable. I think someone else will have to help from here since I do not know how to test non-removeable ram.


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## sobeit (Nov 11, 2007)

something I forgot to ask, what happens if you plug in an external monitor?


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## rsuddath (Sep 29, 2008)

1) there is soldered RAM on the motherboard, it looks nearly impossible to replace, there was additional memory istalled and I have tried to get the unit to boot both with and without the extra RAM with no effect

2) I did try an external monitor with no effect. In addition, because the computer did begin the boot process a couple of times and then freeze, it seems less likely that the display itself has any issues, the display seemed normal when the computer was frozen/unresponsive

thanks for your help in trying to troubleshoot this problem


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