topic Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen.... in PCs & Accessories

Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

nikonian — Sun, 07 May 2006 08:20:22 GMT

My 217M Vaio has suddenly turned white, as soon as I press the power button on, its white and nothing displays on it.

The laptop works perfectly well apart from this, I'm able to post this because I'm using an external monitor.

I don't know when this happened, my daughter was first to tell me about the problem, she uses the laptop for homework.

I searched the site but couldn't find anything relevant to this, my Laptop is about 15 months old.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

Blencogo — Sun, 07 May 2006 14:49:24 GMT

Hi nikonian,

Doesn't sound good as your external monitor is working OK and as the screen goes white immediately on power-on. It does sound like a connection problem or a fault with the inverter.

I suspect this will be a case for vaio-link support.

Can you get into the BIOS - it may be worth resetting the default settings. Have you looked at your monitors in Device Manager to see if any errors are reported? Have you tried booting in Safe Mode?

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

nikonian — Sun, 07 May 2006 17:59:27 GMT

Thanks for the reply,

I’m reluctant to alter any setting just yet, the external monitor I’m connected to only give me visuals inside windows, in other words I don’t see any of the boot process, this also means I’m unable to enter bios/safe mode etc, unless I re-start from within windows.

Matters are made worse as I’m fighting with a virus on my PC at the moment, and could have done with the laptop for assistance.

I was hoping someone would tell me I’ve been dumb and offer me an easy fix, However should this turn out to be a hardware issue, do you think Sony would help seeing as this is a very expensive 15months old laptop, surely this is NOT acceptable?

Regards

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

tonybeard — Sun, 07 May 2006 18:06:17 GMT

Something that serious I would reformat using the F8 recovery wizard and if you have and external monitor plug it in and do blenco's suggestions but generally save your documents to D drive and settings

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

rich912 — Sun, 07 May 2006 18:35:25 GMT

Sad so say that this is almost certainly a hardware problem and no amount of re-installing will make a jot of difference.

As you can use an external monitor that rules out any video adapter problem and ‘white’ suggests that the inverter and backlight are working, which would point to something in the LCD processing, i.e. connections, or main board to LCD circuitry, not necessarily the LCD itself.

As you are outside the warranty period you will not receive a sympathetic hearing from Sony. I suggest that you contact an independent repairer.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

kee-lo_ — Mon, 08 May 2006 12:04:12 GMT

Agreed with Rich, could be a loose LCD>motherboard cable

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

nikonian — Mon, 08 May 2006 14:14:39 GMT

Spoke to Sony about this problem, they wanted £580 for starters.

I could screem, in 15 months I've hardly used this laptop, my kids use it perhaps twice a week for homework. As I said to the Sony Tech "I'll never buy another Sony" and I'll advise anyone else the same.

Overpriced..... I thought I was buying quality (wrong), so its just a £1500.00 disposable Laptop!

I'm now going to write to every newspaper, online review site and watchdog type program I can find, people need to hear about this.

Yes I could have bought the £600 Toshiba, but no I thought I'd buy quality, year right!!!!

Thanks for all your help, hope you never have an LCD problem

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

stephanius — Mon, 08 May 2006 15:43:46 GMT

Hmm, first off, from the techinical point of view, I would say this is most likely the display cable. It might be just have come lose on the mainboard and simple plugging it in may fix it. Graphics card and backlight are ok, so it could only be the cable, or the display's own electronics. If it is the later, the whole display needs to be replaced.

As I understand it, the type of the problem that the unit has determines how much up front payment Sony requests. Since the display and the mainboard are the two most expensive bits in the machine, it is quite logical that this would be a higher price than for example the keyboard.

Now, if it would be only the cable that needs plugging in, you will get your unit back and most of the money returned, if the display's electronics are faulty, you will just get the unit back.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

kee-lo_ — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:51:36 GMT

That would be daylight robbery to charge £500 for a cable!

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

stephanius — Wed, 10 May 2006 15:43:08 GMT

That would be daylight robbery to charge £500 for a cable!

The statement:
"That would be daylight robbery to charge £500 for ice cream!"
is about as irrelevant as the quoted one because Sony is not charging ridiculous prices for cables.

They ask for a an up-front payment based on the likely cost of a repair for the part in question, in this case the screen. If it is just the cable they will do a refund of most of that up-front payment.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

kee-lo_ — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:17:50 GMT

Yeah I know, just saying that if this was the case then it would definately be wrong, though I know people on this forum like to exagerate issues.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

rich912 — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:50:04 GMT

They ask for a an up-front payment based on the likely cost of a repair for the part in question.......

Accepted, but when booking a car into a garage for diagnosis of a fault has anyone been asked for an upfront payment – even from a main dealer, be it under warranty or not?
Sony is holding their costumers to ransom…..

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

kee-lo_ — Thu, 11 May 2006 14:40:53 GMT

True Rich, and it's bad
I don't think any of the car manufacturers do it

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

cambrai — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 00:24:32 GMT

Well ive got exactly the same problem with my 217m (15 months old when it white screened me), im at a loss right now as to what to do next. I cant afford to send it off to Sony for repair, can anyone recommend a good independant ?

Many thanks Mark

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

rich912 — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 09:10:26 GMT

Hi Mark,

Try Techno-Mart, you should be able to get an estimate for the repair either via email or over the phone.

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

cambrai — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:52:22 GMT

Rich,

Thanks very much for the link, will let you know how it goes

Mark:smileyhappy:

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

nikonian — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 07:49:57 GMT

Rich,

How did you get on with your problem?

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

rich912 — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 07:58:02 GMT

Rich,

How did you get on with your problem?

I think that question was for Mark?

Re: Vaio Screen (nothing but white) can be seen....

nikonian — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:49:49 GMT

Sorry... yes it was for Mark.

please update us Mark!