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PC Booting Woes

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by lsbecker

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My Sony VAIO laptop is 1 year and a few months old. OS is Windows Me.

It is having trouble booting up.

Virus scan says no viruses. ScanDisk and Norton Disk Doctor say the hard drive is fine but there have been changes to the boot disk. I had Norton correct these, but to no effect.

On booting, it normally shows a design with the word "VAIO" then the word "Sony" then the Windows Me screen. When it boots at all now, there's only a flash of color instead of the VAIO and the "Sony" hangs, then eventually the boot continues. It says shutdown wasn't normal and wants to do a scan disk. (Shutdown is usually fine.) Once it's booted up, it's fine.

But most of the time, it won't boot. No "VAIO" no flash of color, just a flicker of white, then "Sony" comes up. Then... "Operating system not found."

There's one thing that works. Because it's a laptop, I usually unplug it when it's not in use. If I plug it in and leave it OFF for an hour, then turn it on, it'll boot up, although as described above.

I don't keep a battery in it. It has never worked well with the battery. So it's always plugged into a surge protector or the wall when in use.

I'm trying to avoid having to ship it for repairs. Any thoughts on what might be wrongand how I might fix it myself would be much appreciated.

5 replies

by sfhsgrad00

You may want to try to restore your system back to factory specifications. Do you have some kind of restore CD that came with the system? If so, back-up the data on the system that you need. If you don't need it, don't worry about saving it. Then use the restore CD that came with your laptop. What that will do, is erase everything that was on your system, and return it to the exact state it was in when you purchased it.

by thechas

I see to keys to where I would start from your question.

The fact that it has never worked well with the battery, and the COLD boot, suggest that the internal power supplies are not up to specification.

The battery and external supply provide a single voltage that the laptop converts into several different voltages to run the motherboard.

One thing that you could try to verify the problem, is to replace the external power supply with an adjustable benchtop supply.

CAUTION, IT IS VERY EASY TO CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE TO THE INTERNAL PARTS OF YOUR LAPTOP WITH AN EXTERNAL SUPPLY!!! PROCEED WITH DO CAUTION.

You can monitor the current draw, and adjust the voltage supplied to the laptop in order to find a voltage that it boots at.If the minimum voltage that the laptop boots up at is higher than the battery, or it's power supply, then the internal supplies are bad.

If the laptop boots fine at a lower, or the nominal battery voltage, it may have a higher than specification current draw.

Chas

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