Solved! Sony VAIO: Black screen on start up and then quickly turns off

[Thaboss6]

Hi everyone,

I have had a Sony VAIO laptop (SVE17E11M) for a few years now. It has had some parts (nothing recently) changed but mostly works fine. I have had a few problems with the laptop getting stuck in a bootloop a year ago but that was resolved by fixing the heatsink on the motherboard. Yesterday I returned from a three week holiday and today I was able to use my laptop normally for a few hours until the battery was drained and I put it on the charger. Then the problems began.

Anyway, my problem is this:

When I try to turn on my laptop, I get only a black screen. The fan starts, HDD light is on (continuously), NUM lock light goes on, it sounds as if it is running steadily. Nothing happens for around 1-2 minutes, then the laptop turns itself off again.

This has been great timing by the infamous Mr. Murphy, because I am starting a very tough university semester tomorrow where I absolutely need a laptop.

Things I tried:

• Removing and cleaning both HDD contacts and RAM contacts
• charging the laptop continuously for a few hours
• trying to start the laptop without accu (on AC)
• draining the laptop of any residual power by pressing the on button with no battery or power connected for a minute
• removing and placing back of the CMOS battery
• using a separate LCD screen (although I cannot force it to display there so I cannot be 100% sure that this would work if the laptop screen were the problem)

Does anyone have an idea how I could fix my laptop? It just suddenly stopped and I have no clues left what it could be. Any help would be greatly, greatly, enormously appreciated.

 

[webworkings]

It is possible that the display is the problem and nothing else, but until you can see what is showing on the screen you can't know for sure (without taking it in to a tech of course). You can try the following to see if the display or GPU are the issue.

Try this...

1. Turn the laptop off (not sleep or hibernate but off).
2. Connect an external monitor to the laptop.
3. Turn on the external monitor.
4. Turn on the laptop.

NOTE: You may have to press an "external monitor" button. Could be the f4 button or a button with two monitors on it, for the external monitor to work.

If you can see fine on the external monitor, then your attached display, or the ribbon cable that connects it, are your problem.

If you can't see on the external monitor at all, or the problem occurs on the external monitor as well, then it is probably the graphics card/GPU that is the problem, which may require the motherboard be replaced.

You may also want to try hitting CTRL + SHIFT + WIN + B to try and reset your graphics driver as another possible fix.