Sony Vaio PCG 3A4L laptop problems

[cmangle]

Sony Vaio PCG 3A4L laptop problems

I've got a Sony laptop with two problems . . .

1) the laptop will not recognize the cd/dvd drive unit! Not even in bios! The unit powers up when a cd/dvd is put in (meaning the little green led lights up and blinks) and you can hear the cd/dvd spinning but there no "D:\" or "E:\" drive designation in windows explorer or under disk drives in device manager!

The drive doesn't even appear in devices in bios!

what gives? I have cleaned off several (100+) pieces of spyware and a few virii and IE 8 has issues but other than that the laptop seems ok!

2) The wireless network card will see the router using ipconfig but there's no internet connection. The ip address is screwy though 192.168.0.1! If I ping yahoo.com from a dos box I get no response. Yet if i use a direct cat5 cable to the onboard ethernet port i can get an internet connection fine. I can get (IP address 192.168.1.47) using ipconfig and yahoo pings ok! See attached pics!

any thoughts?

OS vista home premium
cpu intel cenrtrino 1.67ghz
ram 2 gig

thanks chris

 

[buwish]

For the CD/DVD drive problem try removing the upper/lower filters:

http/support.microsoft.com/kb/982116

For the other issue, attempt to reinstall the drivers for the wireless card via Sony's support site and see if that helps.

 

[cmangle]

tried the filters that wasn't it . . .but below is what did work!

Talk about a virus!

A(THE) virus had situated itself in a recovery portion of the hard drive that my virus scanner didn't/wouldn't scan.

After re-enabling the cd/dvd drive(the virus had found some way to disable it) and trying to re-install windows 7, at boot up the computer displays a screen saying that a "CHKDSK" scan is necessary. Upon initiating a "CHKDSK" scan of the hard drive, the scan would go through thousand of files re-indexing them and at the end just hang there and freeze the computer.

If I choose not to let the computer do a "CHKDSK" and let it go on into the Windows 7 startup a box pops up saying that "winsat.exe is corrupted" in folder "C:\$Secure" and installation will be halted!!

WTF?

Hmmmm, I'll fix it's ***!

I took the HD out of the Sony laptop and connect it up via a sata/usb adapter and first check the hard drive out with Ontrack! Ontrack reports no errors or problems with the HD! Hmmm a second time.

Now I open Paragon Partition mgr and look at the hard drive in question. I create a smaller partition (21gb) to save all of the owners music/docs/pics to. Then I see a large bootable partition 151gb out of 200gb, my new 21gb "Backup" partition, and a smaller 8 gb "Recovery" partition!

Hmmm maybe sony has a recovery option, maybe not. Either way I delete the "RECOVERY" partition and reboot! (PS the virus jumped onto MY laptop where I had connected the Sony HD via the sata/usb adapter and wiped out the HD!)

Anyhow I reboot the Vaio and V O I L A, the Sony boots fine into Windows 7 and finishes the install!

Go figure, these virus guys are getting better!
Online

 

[BigDusty]

Hi,

How did you manage to re-enable the cd/dvd drive?

tried the filters that wasn't it . . .but below is what did work!

Talk about a virus!

A(THE) virus had situated itself in a recovery portion of the hard drive that my virus scanner didn't/wouldn't scan.

After re-enabling the cd/dvd drive(the virus had found some way to disable it) and trying to re-install windows 7, at boot up the computer displays a screen saying that a "CHKDSK" scan is necessary. Upon initiating a "CHKDSK" scan of the hard drive, the scan would go through thousand of files re-indexing them and at the end just hang there and freeze the computer.

If I choose not to let the computer do a "CHKDSK" and let it go on into the Windows 7 startup a box pops up saying that "winsat.exe is corrupted" in folder "C:\$Secure" and installation will be halted!!

WTF?

Hmmmm, I'll fix it's ***!

I took the HD out of the Sony laptop and connect it up via a sata/usb adapter and first check the hard drive out with Ontrack! Ontrack reports no errors or problems with the HD! Hmmm a second time.

Now I open Paragon Partition mgr and look at the hard drive in question. I create a smaller partition (21gb) to save all of the owners music/docs/pics to. Then I see a large bootable partition 151gb out of 200gb, my new 21gb "Backup" partition, and a smaller 8 gb "Recovery" partition!

Hmmm maybe sony has a recovery option, maybe not. Either way I delete the "RECOVERY" partition and reboot! (PS the virus jumped onto MY laptop where I had connected the Sony HD via the sata/usb adapter and wiped out the HD!)

Anyhow I reboot the Vaio and V O I L A, the Sony boots fine into Windows 7 and finishes the install!

Go figure, these virus guys are getting better!
Online

 

[cmangle]

Hi,

How did you manage to re-enable the cd/dvd drive?

Ater removing the 8 gig partition from the Sony HD using Paragon, and then replacing the 200gig HD back into the sony, at bootup the CD rom was recognised an the WIN7 install completed!