I've got a nine year-old Sony PCG-F480 laptop that's on the brink.

Here's some background:

A couple years ago I started using it as a backup computer, only to find that using the sound card causes the system to immediately lock up. No problem-- I don't need sound on a backup system anyway. I just disabled the sound card in Windows. Over the past few weeks, my hard drive on my other laptop died a horrible death. No problem-- everything's backed up. Enter the present.

I can press the power button and it will turn on-- LEDs come on, the hard drive spins, and the CD spins-- but the BIOS never starts. If you leave it like running like that for about an hour, come back and restart it, it will normally start the BIOS-- sometimes it locks up after the BIOS chime, but restarting it again will normally cause it to come up. But last week, it booted to the Windows 98 loading screen, and then locked up with horizontal black lines running up the screen. Great. Just restart it, and it'll come up.

After a week of pretty heavy use, I started it the other day, repeating the process as usual, but this time not getting ANYTHING. Not a peep.

I managed to get it running this morning, and get some of my stuff off of it, but then it locked up again, and won't come up at all.

I've done everything I know to do-- reseating the memory, taking the hard drive out and booting it, various cominations of buttons, playing the PIANO on the keyboard, etc., etc..

I've got three questions:
1. Is it toast?
2. If no, what do I do to get it to start?
3. If yes, could someone get me some butter?

Sony PCG-F480
Windows 98 SE
Pentium III 600mhz
192mb RAM (128mb original, I think)
Yahmaha Sound Card (dead)
Integrated GRAPHICS of some sort

Thanks to any who bothered reading the post!

Signed,
Sharkfin

P.S. I'm not worried so much about getting the data off of it-- I can always pull it and plug it in one of my other laptops, but starting it would be a very big time saver. Thanks again!Nine years old? have you ever changed the cmos battery? Some sites I saw suggest replacing the power jack before declaring a motherboard dead, but the cost of getting a repair shop to do this will far exceed the value of a 9 year old machine.

No, I haven't. Actually, I've read that this might be solved by removing the CMOS battery for a few hours-- this was SOMETHING I was going to try. Thoughts?

As for the power jack-- would it still affect the motherboard even if it was running on battery? The battery is still in good condition, and no matter with what power source I start it, it refuses to boot.

UPDATE: I got it to boot to Windows last night, but it locked up before I could do anything. Strange... it's never locked up for seemingly no reason.

Thank you!

Signed,
Anthony Quote from: Shark Fin 101 on October 05, 2008, 11:06:45 AM

As for the power jack-- would it still affect the motherboard even if it was running on battery?