I've been having a rather strange problem with a number of different Sony Vaio laptops; and its beginning to become very frustrating! Over the last 12 months, I've handled about 6 different models of Sony Vaio, all of them have started suffering from the same problem; they just randomly turn themselves off, usually at the most in-opportune fking moments. All 6 of them are started suffering that problem after a number of months, and a few of them just refuse to turn on alltogether too. A quick google led me to a number of different possibilities as to the cause of this problem (Vaio's having a dodgy memory controller for a second stick of memory, keyboard cable shorts etc) but I find that none of the suggestions have worked. What gets me is ALL of these Vaios are doing it; even my friend, who purchased one because I'd bought a number of them has started suffering from the same problems! I need to know if any of you have any idea's, or if anybody has heard about some form of product recall or some official word from Sony; there has to be something official out there, because I can't see all 6 of these laptops having died without something official!
Latest spate of the restarts have been whilst trying to install Gentoo onto one of the laptops; I can be sat at a prompt typing in a command and it'll do it, or it can be sat in the middle of untarring a huge archive when it goes. Some of the laptops that have been suffering from it are basically only used for E-Mail pap, and they've been doing it a hell of a lot too.
Well, if you can check cpu usage, I'll bet something's got it pegged at 100% See if you can aim a fan at the laptop to assist in cooling it.
thats one of the most common causes I would suggest checking for overheating sings like the fan is on all the time and the bottom of the lappy is way too hot. Thats what was happening to my HP so I took it apart and I bought a new heatsink/fan assembly since then I haven't had any problems.
You also might want to check the BIOS settings regarding CPU Shutdown temp. Usually its set to something way low.
Checked - theres about 5 settings in the bios; boot order, boot logo and boot volume... and thats about it!
Give the heatsink and inlet/outlet vents a clean, either use an "air duster" or good old fashioned blowing and possibly somthing hard and flat that will fit between the heatsink fins (just to push out any compacted dust/hair). Its a really common problem and nomally happens after a few months use, it will normally get to the point where the computer will shutdown due to high temperatures under load (as said above). Might be worth getting one of those laptop coolers, or just raising the height of the laptop to allow airflow. What temp does it idle at? My Advent P4 3.06 is now at 42oC when I mine was filled with dust it was idleing in upper 50's
As a guy who works on about 9 laptops a day "ughh i hate notebooks" 1/3 a day are sonys.. anyways i find that sonys overheat on the left hand side where the cpu is "now duh but heres my point" useally the keyboard gets hot system restarts. dont even bother opening the damn thing up just get a can of air or air compressor and shoot it into that general area and get all the dust out.. presto your sony wont restart no more.. sonys have a tendecny to be very fragile to dust.
