Sony Viao Question. (No power, no lights, will not turn on)

[Kevin Palmer]

This is a friends of mine. With the A/C plugged in there are no lights of any kind no matter if the battery is installed or not.



It does not have any power what so ever.



I have tested both the battery and the power supply and they are both good.



After doing some research, it seems that the Viao uses an inverter that is normally mounted behind the screen. I know for sure the inverter powers the screen and I am pretty sure from what I am reading it is what the computer used to supply power to the unit and charge the battery.



Anyone out there know if this is correct of have a better solution for me???



Thanks in advance.

 

[Mark inLA]

Just a vague guess.....most computers have a small cell battery that saves certain settings when the battery and power are disconnected. If that goes dead, some systems (in the past) would not power up at all.

 

[Bruce Richardson 2]

A buddy of mine had a Viao do the same thing. It turned out to be bad memory sticks. He had a 512 and a 256 in and it wouldn't start with both in. If you removed either it would try to start, but had different problems depending on the stick he had in. He replaced both with 512s and it's fine. Apparently, Viaos get real hot around the area of the memory if the fans/heat sinks are dirty and will fry the memory. Extreme cases will melt the solder joints at the memory contacts. If you have access to any memory to try it would be worth a shot.

 

[Kevin Palmer]

There is two 512 sticks in there. I have tried it with one in, two in, reversed them and none in. No power lights ever come on and no power makes it to the power button...

 

[Kevin Palmer]

Just bumping this up for the day...

 

[Jason Jenkins]

I've repaired a number of laptops with just this issue. Dell's, HP's, Gateway's. The inverter you are referring to only powers the LCD screen. Usually I find that the motherboard has developed an issue and needs to be replaced. No amount of component swapping will fix it.



I've always done searches for replacement motherboards on ebay. Some can be expensive, but sometimes a great deal can be found. Replaced one in an HP laptop that HP wanted $700 for a refurbished motherboard. Got one on ebay still packaged from HP for $100.



Hope this helps.

 

[Scott Heckler]

I would get the machine down to bare bones. What I mean by that is remove any cards that you don't need to boot the machine and still see the display. You might just remove all cards if you see no lights at all. Not familiar with the Viao but if no power at all removing all the cards will get it to just the motherboard. You can see then if the power will come on. If yes, then power down and add a board at a time until you find the one causing the issue. If no, then as jljenkins28 said it most likely is the motherboard.