Hi everybody
Someone must have put the evil eye on my laptop 
I have a PCG GRT 996VP laptop for around 2,5 years
I had several (minor or not so minor) problems from the first day I bought it e.g. DVD not able to read all disks
I did not opt for the official Sony service because I knew this would require time and money since I live in Greece and the service is located in the UK. So I bought a new DVD player, I replaced the HD with a new one when it failed after 1,5 years and tried to live with the fact that one of my USB ports was not working.
However recently it begun having problems during boot. If USB devices where pluged in the other 2 USB ports, it would not boot. More precisely it would show the VAIO logo, play the sound, blink the leds on the right and then freeze while still showing the logo. Each time I had to do the following:
1. remove the USB devices
2. boot the laptop (it would freeze again this time)
3. try to boot again (this time everything would go ok)
4. plug in again my USB devices
This lasted for a month or so. As you can imagine, now it will not boot no matter what I do. Some of the things I tried to resolve the problem are:
1. removing the battery
2. leaving the laptop to *rest* for a few days and try again
3. cold reset
4. uninstalling and reinstalling the memory modules
As far as I can guess this has to be a USB port problem.
Since I am a computer eng. I am pretty sure that if I send the laptop to the VAIO service, the most propable thing they will do is to replace the motherboard.
Consequently, I would like to give it a try myself before I send it for a service. I am thinking of getting to the USB ports and somehow disable them one by one, hopping that the freezing is caused by them. But before that, I would appreciate any other ideas, proposals or information related to my problem.
Thanks in advance
George
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