B
britishpcrepairs
- Original Poster
- #1
Recently picked up a SONY Vaio for repairs. It is one of the most curious cases and so I thought I might share it with all the experts here to see if some helpful advise can come through!
Machine - Sony VAIO VGN-FZ series. nVidia Graphics card (will post details later).
OS: Vista Home Premium
Problem - The customer reported that one fine day the laptop started rebooting on its own. Windows would try to start but after the green loading bars on a black screen the screen would go black for a while. The machine would restart and prompt the user that Windows did not start properly. The machine would then ask the user to start in Safe mode or Normally.
What the client did - Tried to restore Vista to factory defaults by using the Sony recovery utility from the protected partition on the laptop. However at the stage when the installation is done and the message "Windows is preparing your computer to start for the first time" appears with lines of white dots on the screen, the laptop would hang and the text and the dots would get completely distorted. If you repeate the recovery process again, exactly the same would happen.
What I did - Booted it using Knoppix. It booted up fine. I left it running for a day. Had fun with it. Restarted it, shut it down, played some games on it. No problems.
Then I installed Vista using a retail CD (Home Premium) again. I installed the Vista Service packs, Sony Chipset drivers etc and had no problems. Then I installed nVidia drivers. the install prompted me to reboot and as soon as I rebooted the original problem of Vista restarting itself started happening! I booted in Safe mode, used system restore to restore the laptop to the check point which was created prior to installing nVidia drivers, rebooted and presto! all up and running!
If I install nVidia drivers and reboot the problem happens constantly. I can not give the system back as it is since without nVidia drivers it is running in the good old VGA mode.
Any suggestions?
Nik
Machine - Sony VAIO VGN-FZ series. nVidia Graphics card (will post details later).
OS: Vista Home Premium
Problem - The customer reported that one fine day the laptop started rebooting on its own. Windows would try to start but after the green loading bars on a black screen the screen would go black for a while. The machine would restart and prompt the user that Windows did not start properly. The machine would then ask the user to start in Safe mode or Normally.
What the client did - Tried to restore Vista to factory defaults by using the Sony recovery utility from the protected partition on the laptop. However at the stage when the installation is done and the message "Windows is preparing your computer to start for the first time" appears with lines of white dots on the screen, the laptop would hang and the text and the dots would get completely distorted. If you repeate the recovery process again, exactly the same would happen.
What I did - Booted it using Knoppix. It booted up fine. I left it running for a day. Had fun with it. Restarted it, shut it down, played some games on it. No problems.
Then I installed Vista using a retail CD (Home Premium) again. I installed the Vista Service packs, Sony Chipset drivers etc and had no problems. Then I installed nVidia drivers. the install prompted me to reboot and as soon as I rebooted the original problem of Vista restarting itself started happening! I booted in Safe mode, used system restore to restore the laptop to the check point which was created prior to installing nVidia drivers, rebooted and presto! all up and running!
If I install nVidia drivers and reboot the problem happens constantly. I can not give the system back as it is since without nVidia drivers it is running in the good old VGA mode.
Any suggestions?
Nik
