Strange Power troubles on Vaio

hansolo1l5

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Jul 23, 2009
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I have a Sony Vaio VPCEH12FX and its doing something really strange. It won't turn on unless I have it unplugged from the power cable and have it running only on the battery. Then it will turn on no problem. Once it boots into windows i can plug in the power cord and it will say that its plugged in and charging. however, if i leave the laptop for some time and come back the whole thing has shut off. It seems like it charges the battery some because it still has enough juice over the days for me to repeat this process. Very confused as to what could be wrong. The system is running windows 7 64 bit.

thanks for any input or advice.
 
Solution
Sounds like the brick or connector is bad. If you are getting the light on the brick, but you cannot charge, the jack has probably worked loose. Check on youtube for repair methods. The pins on the jacks are pretty small and sometimes the flow solder job is not up to the strains put on the jack. If you're handy with a small tip iron, you might be able to do it yourself, otherwise a decent pc shop should be able to handle it.

markwp

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Jan 22, 2013
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Try booting with the power supply plugged into the laptop, but UNplugged from the wall. If it boots as normal, plug in the psu to the wall and check to see if it charges.

It sounds like the brick may be intermittant.
 

hansolo1l5

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Jul 23, 2009
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okay so i tried what you said. i booted by having the power cord plugged into the laptop but no in the wall. it booted up, and then i plugged in the cord into the wall to see if it would charge. it does say charging, and the little red light on the vaio chassis is red indicating the psu power source is being used. however, the graphic of the battery with the white charging icon that goes up and down moves rather quickly than slows to a crawl and the percentage of how much it is charging up doesnt seem to be moving at all. also if i restart the machine that will work, but if i shut it down and then try to turn it back on i have to remove external power and run off the battery for it to turn on again.
 

hansolo1l5

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Jul 23, 2009
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maybe its the power brick? the brick lights up green. the power outlet in the laptop where the cord plugs in also feels kind of loose. i know some laptops these are soldered to the board; i was looking up the part online and this model laptop seems to just be a cord that hooks up to the motherboard. is it still possible for those to go bad from wear and movement? when the laptop is turned on and it says its charging in windows the battery percentage just slowly goes down never up.
 

markwp

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Jan 22, 2013
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Sounds like the brick or connector is bad. If you are getting the light on the brick, but you cannot charge, the jack has probably worked loose. Check on youtube for repair methods. The pins on the jacks are pretty small and sometimes the flow solder job is not up to the strains put on the jack. If you're handy with a small tip iron, you might be able to do it yourself, otherwise a decent pc shop should be able to handle it.
 
Solution

hansolo1l5

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Jul 23, 2009
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cool thanks for all your timely and excellent help. i was afraid that might be the problem just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing anything else. im going to look into the jack getting repaired.