Laptop won't work - Blank black screen- Sony Vaio.

lonestarfan

18.1 Defective Products
Sony is under a legal duty to consumers to supply Products that are in conformity with your contract with Sony.

If your Product is or becomes faulty through no fault of your own then you may be entitled to a refund, repair or replacement of your Product. Please contact the 'Support' section of the Sony website and also refer to the section on Product Guarantees below.

If you have a complaint about the service that Sony has provided then please contact the 'Support' section on the Sony website.

18.2 Product Guarantee rights
Sony provides a commercial guarantee for certain Products, entitling you to a remedy (subject to the applicable guarantee terms and conditions) in the event that your Product requires servicing within the stated period of cover due to a defect of materials or workmanship (“Sony Guarantee”). The guarantee documentation for Sony Products, which sets out the service undertakings under the Sony Guarantee, is available via the ‘Support’ section of the Sony website.

If you are purchasing a Product as a consumer you will also benefit from legal rights under EU law in relation to the sale of defective, non-conforming or mis-described Products, for a minimum of 2 years depending on your country of purchase (national laws may give additional rights). These statutory rights apply, and you may enforce them, whether or not your Product is covered by a Sony Guarantee. These legal rights are not affected by anything else in these terms.

With the exception of any applicable Sony Guarantee or any extended guarantees that may be offered by Sony, and without limiting your ability to enforce your statutory rights, as mentioned above, Sony gives no guarantees with respect to Products or Services.

The above was attached to my invoice. Does this give me a 2 year warranty as one of the posters suggested? TIA.

lonestarfan

Crinkmeister wrote: »

Do you have any bootable OS discs?

We can't find them so don't think we had them delivered with the laptop nor made them ourselves.
Would they fix this then?

NiftyDigits

lonestarfan wrote: »

Thnx.
Firstly the monitor. The 1st time I plugged the laptop into an external monitor the colour test on the monitor went off. The second time I plugged the laptop into the external monitor I pressed Fn+F7 as someone recommended and that time the colour test never went off the external monitor. What does this tell us?
Secondly your link.
I did do the the assist/rescue recovery part yesterday that you linked. I did it yesterday after the update to windows 8.1 failed and I needed to get it back to windows 8. However the next day is when I had these problems of it being a black screen. Now when I press the assist and power button whilst off it powers up but nothing comes on the screen.
Any ideas?
Thanks for trying to help. Much appreciated as 2 days is a long time to be without a laptop !

One or the other, not both.

I don't know anything about a colour test. In other words, whether it is a function of the monitor or the laptop.

NiftyDigits

lonestarfan wrote: »

18.1 Defective Products
Sony is under a legal duty to consumers to supply Products that are in conformity with your contract with Sony.

If your Product is or becomes faulty through no fault of your own then you may be entitled to a refund, repair or replacement of your Product. Please contact the 'Support' section of the Sony website and also refer to the section on Product Guarantees below.

If you have a complaint about the service that Sony has provided then please contact the 'Support' section on the Sony website.

18.2 Product Guarantee rights
Sony provides a commercial guarantee for certain Products, entitling you to a remedy (subject to the applicable guarantee terms and conditions) in the event that your Product requires servicing within the stated period of cover due to a defect of materials or workmanship (“Sony Guarantee”). The guarantee documentation for Sony Products, which sets out the service undertakings under the Sony Guarantee, is available via the ‘Support’ section of the Sony website.

If you are purchasing a Product as a consumer you will also benefit from legal rights under EU law in relation to the sale of defective, non-conforming or mis-described Products, for a minimum of 2 years depending on your country of purchase (national laws may give additional rights). These statutory rights apply, and you may enforce them, whether or not your Product is covered by a Sony Guarantee. These legal rights are not affected by anything else in these terms.

With the exception of any applicable Sony Guarantee or any extended guarantees that may be offered by Sony, and without limiting your ability to enforce your statutory rights, as mentioned above, Sony gives no guarantees with respect to Products or Services.

The above was attached to my invoice. Does this give me a 2 year warranty as one of the posters suggested? TIA.

No it isn't the same thing.
Have you actually approached SONY in the first instance?
If they refuse support, then you can quote the paragraph above.

How can you be sure that the machine is powered off and not in Sleep/Standby mode?

Look here and here

lonestarfan

NiftyDigits wrote: »

When are you pressing the Assist button?

Make sure that the machine is completely off, not on Standby.
Often people configure thei laptop's Power button to send the laptop to sleep, rather than switching off completely, causing themselves extra problems in these cases.
Once completely off, switch it on using the Assist button.

Usually if it's a Graphics card problem, there would be some indication beforehand.
Also, since you have two graphics options, there should be an option of switching from one option to another via the BIOS settings. It might be that the card has come loose. Either way you need to get to the BIOS settings, if only to reset the BIOS to Default/Optimal settings.

Some Sony laptops are supplied with a two year warranty. Have you checked with them?

Forgot to say yes I've pressed the assist button on its own and the power button on its own and I've tried them together and none of these combinations work

NiftyDigits

lonestarfan wrote: »

Forgot to say yes I've pressed the assist button on its own and the power button on its own and I've tried them together and none of these combinations work

Once you hear it boot up, what happens when you press and hold the Power switch? Can you hear it power down and switch off?

lonestarfan

Yes I can hear it power down.

grumpycrab

Damn tricky debugging over the internet. Did you take battery out as suggested above? Try again (I know groan)
1. unplug power, remove battery, press power button for 20secs
2. plug all in again and press startup
It sounds like it starts up? Wait a couple of minutes (to ensure its started up)
3. Assuming it goes straight to desktop/start screen (IE no password) type Windows key+L (to lock screen). It should make a ding-dong noise?
Type Enter (assuming no password) and it should make another noise (unlocks).
4. plug in external monitor
press Fn+F7 and Enter (I'm not sure about Enter)
press Fn+F7,F7 (that's F7 twice while holding Fn)
press Fn+F7,F7,F7 (that's F7 thrice while holding Fn)
We're just trying to get the VAIO to put something on the external display.

You have been asked if you got into the BIOS but I guess you have not seen ANYTHING on the screen since the problem occurred.

Worst case is warranty (under 2 years) repair. The problem then is:- do you have any data on the laptop that needs saving BEFORE repair because the repair will undoubtedly wipe the disk. (accessing the data to do this should be straight forward).

NiftyDigits

Have you called SONY Support?

NiftyDigits

grumpycrab wrote: »

Damn tricky debugging over the internet. Did you take battery out as suggested above? Try again (I know groan)
1. unplug power, remove battery, press power button for 20secs
2. plug all in again and press Assist.

Don't have proper Internet access at the mo...so adapted your instructions.