silicon pop culture!

Hi,

Sorry if this is long….

I’ve had my Vaio tr3a for 4 years without any problems.

Then one day, my vaio immediately blacked out with nothing on the lcd.  But the green power light and battery charging light was still on and the hard drive was still spinning and the dvd drive could still eject and spin cds.

After this problem first started, sometimes the vaio would turn on and boot as normal, but when you even slightly tapped it or squeezed it or even touched it sometimes, it would suddenly freeze and show some strange lines on the lcd and then black out again.  Sometimes if you squeeze the case as you turn it on or tap it a couple of times and turned it on again, it would turn on as normal and you could leave it on for hours without any problems if you left it alone, but once you tap it a little or moved it, it would freeze and black out.

Now, nothing turns on anymore.  The only thing on is the green power light and battery light, and the hard drive is still spinning on and dvd drive still ejects and spins.

I have tested the lcd and it is perfect and functions great by itself.
I have tested the ram and they work on my friend’s tr3 perfectly.
The hard drive is perfect.

So, I think it’s the motherboard or video chip on the motherboard.

But the strange thing like tapping and squeezing that seems to cause this problem or rarely make the vaio work somethings makes me believe something might be loose.  But after examining the motherboard, all the solders seem in place.

Does anyone know what might be going on or do I have to replace the motherboard.

Thanks.

LCD power inverter perhaps?

Sorry been away. you can try running the mainboard outside the case with nothing connected. I often test them like this you need only ram, screen, touchpad (which includes power switch) and keyboard if you want to be able to type anything, (it’s not required to boot though)..

Power it from the adaptor without battery. at least like this you can move / twist the mainboard about.. make sure you discharge yourself before touching it..

Thanks for the suggestion VAIOfabulous, but the LCD works perfectly by itself and doesn’t have any problems…you can tap it or do anything to it and it performs perfectly.

Thanks Bladerunner for your suggestion as well.  I did try your suggestion.  I put on my antistatic gloves and played with the motherboard for an hour or so.  After many attempts, I was unable to get it to fully boot, except for once when I pushed/squeezed hard near the video card/cpu area and memory area at the same time, but as soon as I let go afterwards, the screen had these stange horizontal lines and various scrambled colors and locked up. 

I tried to replicate the situation but was unable to replicate it fully.  Nearly one more time after that with only the memory area, but only for a brief moment as I let go prematurely.

As a desperation, my good friend let me take his tr3 apart and I used his motherboard with everything else from my tr3a and everything worked great, so I thin I have definitely determined it’s something with/on the motherboard.

Does anyone know how to or who will fix motherboards or where I would find a motherboard….as well as cost issues.

Thanks.

you want something like this:-

ebay.com type or copy & paste this number into the search.

290205385399