Interesting Sony Vaio Laptop problem

[Russ Smith]

Girlfriends is 3 weeks short of 1 year so just barely still under warranty.

Sunday night it's on but in sleep mode, I pick it up to look at something and when it wakes up it freezes and won't do anything. It eventually tells me windows stopped working and I need to reboot so I do. It comes up asking if I want to start windows normally and I say yes, it fails to start and goes into repair. I let it run repair and as always it says it can't fix anything. Reboot twice, same thing.

So I then go to last known good condition and it won't boot into that either. It has a builtin in "assist" button which is just a receovery partition so I try that and it asks if I want to use a restore point. I know restore is turned on so I say yes, and it then says it can't find any restore points. Again I know that it's turned on so I'm getting nervous now.

Finally found the recovery CD's I made, then tried to recover from the assist button but it asked me to put in the recovery CD's. Made one last repair attempt and then went to recovery.

Get the external HD out so I can save files using the recover, it says it's going to take 45 minutes to do so, 45 minutes later it's done nothing. Another 15 minutes and it then tells me it's unable to save any files! I didn't have ubuntu at home so I didn't try that.

At that point I realized the files were basically not important so I'll just recover. First CD runs fine, 2nd CD stops. Their setup is stupid it doesn't just let me start where it left off, I had to run the first CD again. After 4 attempts I realized the 2nd CD wasn't going to finish. Next day I called Sony to get replacement recovery CD's, and they tell me it's under warranty, we will just send out a tech to replace the hard disk and memory onsite.

Very surprised, the hard disk is fine. I brought Ubuntu and Seagate Disk Wizard home. Ubuntu can see the drive fine but apparently the first restore CD wiped the files. Disk Wizard says the hard disk is fine, no bad sectors at all. It just doesn't have an OS on it because the first CD wiped it.

So good recovery CD's should have been able to just reinstall the OS back to the original state. I have all the information to reinstall the Antivirus and the MS Office etc. So all I lost was a few trivial files. But I have no idea why Sony is insisting on the hard drive?

They said if the HD was good, the recovery CD;s would work, the 2nd one is failing because it can't get certain files off the hard disk. I thought those files were on the recovery CD's?

Anyhow I guess we get a new HD for free, then I'll just reinstall the AV and Office and put it back as was but a little nervous. I'm assuming it must be a known issue with the hard drives for them to assume this, Dell would NEVER suggest replacing a hard disk that fast, they always want you to reinstall the OS first.

 

[Russ Smith]

Tech just left. He's positive it's the hard drive said he's been replacing lots of them. Not a Sony problem(he doesn't work for Sony).

Old HD was Toshiba, replacement is Western Digital, said they use 4-5 different brands in the Sony laptops and they've decided for now the WD ones seem to be the best.

Got new recovery CD's so that's good.

 

[SweetD]

may also be bad memory stick or motherboard, but if your hard drive is making a clicking noise it would be bad.

 

[Russ Smith]

may also be bad memory stick or motherboard, but if your hard drive is making a clicking noise it would be bad.

I think you're right I'm going to pull out the 2nd stick that I added to check.

We went to Sac Friday night, used it at her sisters house. Had to redo the wifi password since I'd redone the system. it worked fine. We went upstairs, I rebooted and windows failed to load. Restarted and it worked that time. Next morning fine upstairs.

DOwnstairs later I booted up and windows failed again, 3 times. New hard drive. Ran repair, nothing, couldn't fix. Restore from most recent point failed, 2nd most recent point worked. Decided to check for virus, and antivirus won't run, says bad file!

Can't connect to wifi since restore point was prior to password being entered so I found the ethernet cable and used that. Uninstalled antivirus, downloaded it again, ran it, nothing, no virus.

Drove 2 hours home, luckily missing ASU beating UCLA, and then girlfriend booted up and first time it failed again, weird cryptic message not windows failing but something else. Rebooted and it worked.

I'm making a system image on an external HD right now. I'm hoping it's the memory, we're now out of warranty on the system so if it's the mother board I'd hate to have to pay for it.

Crazy. My gilfriend thinks its the wifi at her sisters house, that its somehow corrupting our laptop? I think that's highly unlikely, more likely it's the physical trip in the car, either memory stick is loose or mother board is wonky?

We are taking it to the Philippines next week, very leery it might not work when we get there so I'm going to pull out the added on memory before we go just in case.