Sony Vaio Laptop Help It's Died

[blfoster]

Are you absolutely sure you weren't seeing ANYTHING when you turned it in before? The POST screen (Power On Self Test) is the first screen you get when you turn on the computer. Depending on the motherboard, it will display a logo, or your computer's specs, etc. Windows and your hard disks have no effect on it.

Was your boyfriend messing with the BIOS? If not, and you are sure you weren't seeing the POST screen, then you can be reasonably sure that there is something wrong in hardware.

 

[red-devil0602]

the black screen was coming up with the windows logo on and then it went blank when it should normally be the password screen

 

[blfoster]

Oh, I thought you said you couldn't see anything. In that case just reinstall windows.

EDIT: Sometimes that's faster than trying to figure out what is wrong. Also, I can imagine that if the display drivers were screwed up by the partitioning, other things were screwed up too. It will probably be more stable with a fresh install.

 

[red-devil0602]

I have re installed it but now it is stuck at 4 bit display

 

[blfoster]

You reinstalled windows?

If so, did you wipe out the old copy of windows first? It would probably be best to reformat. Also, it's really a good idea to have separate partitions for windows and your files, so that you can reformat the windows partition and leave your files intact.

After reinstalling windows you will need to install the display drivers.

 

[Bloo]

I have re installed it but now it is stuck at 4 bit display

how did you manage to reinstall in 15 minutes ?

 

[red-devil0602]

right i have managed to get the screen back up and it is still stuck a 4 bit so will try to search for the grapics drivers

It took over 30mins if you look at the time on my post above you will see when i got it going

 

[Bloo]

That's still astoundingly fast ! For a reformat of the harddrive and reinstall should take at least an hour or more. Actually what operating system are you installing ?

 

[Locke]

If the screen just won't work then just attach an external monitor and that should do the trick. You can load all of your computer onto another laptop or computer and reinstall windows. Just put your Windows CD in and reboot your computer. The disk will take over from there. Make sure though that your BIOS boots your CD drive first. If it didn't:

put in your CD.

Reboot windows.

hit f12 or f10 or delete, depending on what it requires to get into the blue screen in which you can change your preferences

find something that says "boot sequence"

(Directions are on bottom of screen) put CD drive as number 1 to boot.

Save and exit

Then windows will boot again and this time your windows CD will take care of the rest of it... follow the directions.

SB

 

[blfoster]

Just over 30 minutes isn't unreasonable, if you have a fast hard drive and cd drive.

 

[Bloo]

I don't doubt that . But on a second hand laptop ? Something that's second hand is "generally" so for a reason and has served the purpose for the original user - i.e. the laptop for example isn't fast enough anymore. Very rarely will you find a high spec almost new in perfect working order laptops second hand.

If it can do that, I'm impressed. Our high spec IBM thinkpads at work generally take around the 1 hour mark to fully reformat and re-install Windows XP - not even talking about SP2 or any updates.

 

[blfoster]

Seriously? That's a really long time from my experience. And I've installed windows on a lot of different computers.

 

[Bloo]

Yep all of them In fact even some HP of the desktops I've done.

 

[jarmado]

it all depends on the size of the hard disk if you ask me...
long time for high spec laptop/desktops because they come with bigger disk now..
my ibm t43p comes with a 60gb...
my imac comes with 250gb...

my old ibm t20 comes with only 20gb so faster reformat...

newer pc=bigger disk=longer formatting time
older pc=smaller disk=shorter formatting time..
makes sense to me..

 

[blfoster]

If you do a quick format it doesn't take that long even with bigger disks. That only works when the disk has been previously formatted, though.