Sony Vaio completely died... no clue where to start troubleshooting.

Hey, I have a Sony Vaio from a few years back. I haven't noticed many problems with it other than the battery has slowly and slowly been holding less charge over the years, to the point where fully charged it has only been lasting ten minutes or so, tops lately.

Anyway I was on my machine, plugged in, and heard a sort of "pop" sound and bam, died. It won't even try to turn on, no lights, no nothing, whether plugged in or not. The cord is still getting a green light on its box, but the actual laptop isn't responding at all.

First question is, could this be the battery died on me? But wouldn't it still work if it were plugged in regardless? (I'm not sure about that...) Either way a new battery is EXPENSIVE so I don't want to buy one unless I know for sure that is the issue.

Other than that, I have no idea where to go from here. I'm not even sure where I could take it to have it looked at without spending half the cost of a new laptop...

Any ideas?

 

Fried motherboard by the sounds of it. I had a toshiba that made a pop noise and that's what it was. Could be something else but when things go *POP* in computers it's usually a pretty bad scene.

 

Yep. Pops are generally bad. You can try taking the battery out and trying to boot it using only ac power, also I would check just to make sure you have an output on your ac adapter (using a multimeter). Check the label on the adapter itself to see what the dc output should be (probably around 19v). Holiday is probably right though, motherboard, unfortunately, is most likely gone.

 

AC only wasn't working either, so I guess the battery isn't the issue?

I can try to test the cord but the pop definitely came from inside the machine itself.

Also, what would cause something like that to happen? I mean, was it likely the way I was using it, or does that kind of thing just happen regardless?

 

Doubt it was usage, unless you've been especially rough with the machine - overheating can cause component stress, and heat is always an issue with portables...

You might try pulling any covers you can (make note of connector and screw placement), and visually inspect everything - look for obvious burn tracks, components that look deformed, etc...

You can always try the Freon tricks, but those are usually shots in the dark...

 

Like Caliban said, if you heard a pop something probably physically blew. You would more than likely be able to detect it visually. Some laptops also have fuses on the motherboard. Not glass inline fuses like you would usually see, but solid state fuses that look like resistors. As advised, start by removing all the access covers and see what you can see. If that doesn't turn anything up, are you comfortable taking your laptop apart?

 

Excellent point - forgot about those things...had to replace one in a Fluke DVM (I checked my electric fence with it :confused) - took a while to figure it out...