I have a Sony Vaio PCG-TR1MP running Ubuntu. It is dead. When I power up you hear some noise like the hard drive starts spinning, but then nothing. The screen doesn't flicker, it just stays black. I tried booting from CD and its the same - its spins briefly then nothing. Black screen. I don't remember dropping it or spilling anything on it, I can't imagine what has gone wrong although it is a couple years old now. Lots of photos on there I'd like to save. Ideas?
Did this just happen? Did it just shut off one day while you were using it? Try unplugging it and then remove the battery. With that removed, press the power button to try and drain the capacitors and reset it. Finally, put the battery back in and the power cord and try booting it. If that doesn't work you can try to flash it. Some laptops have a power-on key combo to flash the chip inside.
Yeah just happened, not while I was using it. One day it worked, the next day it wouldn't boot. I guess it has happened before, but rarely - it wouldn't start so I would power off and try again and then it would work. Now it just flashes a few lights, spins the HD and CD for a second, and then nothing. And the screen never lights up at all. I tried the battery trick, no difference. Flashing it I will have to research.
Also, you can pull out the RAM sticks and clean off the contacts with a clean pencil eraser. Clean them well and try not to touch anything on the chip or the contacts.
So it died again and no amount of pencil eraser would fix it. But I figured it was still the RAM so I started swapping chips and slots and figured out i had a RAM chip that has gone bad.
