Balling
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Registered: 7th Apr 04
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Little bro's Sony Vaio is acting up. It's out of warranty and he's in school so can't afford to replace it.
Symptoms as explained by him:
"Suddenly it started working extremely slowly.
Rebooted it, but it just turned up with a white screen.
Rebooted again, screen turned white again, left it turned on and after a looooong wait, it loaded up Windows.
Regular Win 7 theme was replaced by something resembling Win 95.
Performance is horrible and opening anything at all results mostly in a system crash.
Tried to reboot it, but now it's just stuck at the 'closing down screen'."
Any thoughts? I immediately thought RAM, but is there anything he can do to test it?
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Does it have a 'speed-stamina' switch? Sounds possibly graphics related, if it does have that switch, switch it the other way to check if it dies the same.
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Balling
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quote:
Originally posted by John
Does it have a 'speed-stamina' switch? Sounds possibly graphics related, if it does have that switch, switch it the other way to check if it dies the same.
Cheers.
He says he doesn't know what that is, so probably not...
Is there any hard proof way of knowing if it's the graphics card?
Model is a VPCEB1S1E btw, if that makes any difference.
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daz_corsa
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Registered: 28th Jul 13
Location: Winwick, Cheshire
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just format the machine
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Aaron
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Registered: 9th Aug 04
Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Aye, the first thing i'd do at this stage is do a restore using the recovery partition. Take the HD out if needed, and somehow take any important data off it.
The "white screen" could be some sort of virus/malware, as i've seen that before.
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Bart
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Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
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Windows 7 has a repair mode (F5 or F8 iirc during boot), which you can run a diagnostic hardware test.
It sounds like a hardware fault to me, so a format probably wouldn't solve anything
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Balling
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Startup repair just freezes.
Did a memory check (F5 on startup) and it didn't return any errors.
Tried to run the recovery disc, but each time it reaches 81% is just prompts and error 385 "an error occurred while executing an application".
Pretty much stuck now...
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Dave
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Time to give Steves dad a call.
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Aaron
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Location: Cottingham, East Riding
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Balling
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Dom
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Sounds pretty bodged and probably malware of sorts (i'd be surprised if it's a hardware fault; when i've come across it, it has been a virus or malware). If he can get into Normal Mode, then install Malwarebytes and clean the system with that.
Otherwise look at using something like the AVG Rescue CD and firstly do a AV scan and then follow that up with a MemTest86+ test (both should be on the disc) if you think it could be RAM issue.
Personally though, i'd think about shifting personal data elsewhere (do this via Safe Mode; and if it's to another system make sure that has an AV installed) and then nuking the drive completely and reinstalling W7.
Then slap him in the side of the head for going on dodgy sites without adequate protection in place, ie - get a decent AV (Avast Free etc) installed :lol
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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Hitman Pro kickstart will rule in/out malware.
Download it to a good PC, it makes a bootable USB drive, boot to that and it'll scan.
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Balling
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Registered: 7th Apr 04
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This is starting to sound like a lot of work.
Think I'll just tell him it's broke and he needs to replace it... 
Dom, what you say about reinstalling Win 7, isn't that what we've been doing with the recovery discs, which went tits up?
Is there another way?
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Dom
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Registered: 13th Sep 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Balling
Is there another way?
Grab a W7 CD that matches the license key and do a reinstall with a complete disk format; you'll lose the recovery partition (although there are methods of recreating that if need be) but it'll completely 'nuke' the system.
Obviously you want to copy across (to a USB drive etc) any data your brother wants to keep - do this via Safe Mode (press F8 during bootup) and obviously you want to scan the data prior to copying back to the new install.
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Balling
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All he has on the PC is iTunes bought music, Steam bought games, and some open source software, so we'll take the safe route and just re-download everything from the source.
All his personal documents etc. is stored in Dropbox.
He's pretty anal about security and runs a paid version of McAfee antivirus. Is it safe to conclude that this is shit, then?
Where would I grab a W7 CD? One didn't come with the PC. And what do you mean "matches the license key"?
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pow
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Registered: 11th Sep 06
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Sony haves a recovery partition, only way you can reinstall from cd easily is to create a 8 dvd recovery cd set from the machine itself.
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Dom
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quote:
Originally posted by pow
Sony haves a recovery partition, only way you can reinstall from cd easily is to create a 8 dvd recovery cd set from the machine itself.
To create the recovery discs (iirc, the VAIO software has the option) he'll have to boot up into 'normal mode' (unless it can be done from safe mode?) and from the sounds of it, Balling's brother isn't able to.
Similarly, from what Balling mentioned, it sounds like the recovery partition is also borked -
quote:
Tried to run the recovery disc, but each time it reaches 81% is just prompts and error 385 "an error occurred while executing an application".
If that's the case then there isn't many options other than trying to repair the current system or nuking the lot and starting from scratch (he'll lose the recovery partition but as the system is out of warranty i can't see that being much of a loss).
Balling - See if he can create recovery discs, it's the preferred method as it'll put the system back to a factory install.
If you want to nuke the system then you'll need to grab the ISO for Windows 7 version that corresponds to the license sticker (THIS show it as being Windows 7 Home Premium x64), which you can get from HERE (second link if the license is for Home Prem x64), burn it to disc and install from that.
You'll want to select 'Custom (Advanced)' install and when it asks you where to install W7 (THIS), select and delete all partitions until it shows the drive as having 'Unallocated Space', then click 'New' and create a new partition to the maximum disk size - the installer will then mention that it needs to create extra partitions, click next and continue with the installation.
The system will need to be re-activated but he should be able to do that without much issue (as it's the same hardware/device etc); worse case, he might need to phone MS to reactivate.
Once that's done, he needs to do a full update of the system and he might need to install various drivers (if after the update, the Device Manager still shows some devices haven't been installed, yellow device icon, then he can grab the drivers from the laptops download page HERE).
Personally McAfee is pretty bloaty and would suggest him to grab Avast Free but each to their own on that.
And if he has any paid software, like MS Office, then make sure he has copies of the license keys for those prior to the re-install.
Edit - This might help with regards to the install - http://www.techtalkz.com/windows-7/514412-windows-7-installation-guide-tutorial.html.
[Edited on 16-09-2013 by Dom]
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Balling
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Cheers Dom, will (hopefully tell him to) try all that! 
quote:
Originally posted by pow
Sony haves a recovery partition, only way you can reinstall from cd easily is to create a 8 dvd recovery cd set from the machine itself.
Yeah, those are the discs he's been using, to no avail.
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