**This post is long but detailed. I'd read it at least long enough to see if this seems like the issue you're having as opposed to something else. If you'd like to just skip to the quick steps please scroll to bottom of the post!**
Hi!
Sorry to NECRO this old thread however I've recently had a semi-breakthrough on this issue which if you google "sony vaio not powering up intermittently/ever anymore" you'll see that it's clearly common enough to rule out one off random failures and likely a flaw that endangers any owner of these VAIO Motherboards. Hopefully this little information I'm about to share will help others from junking (as I essentially did for 2 years until randomly finding it in the closet and was bored so I started tinkering (and I'm glad I did!) or even worse, paying hundreds of dollars to have a pro repair it and them likely just throwing in a new mobo which, if manufactured with the same architecture, is at the same exact risk as you were before to have this issue.
So here goes the story of how I came to resolve this Laptop Not Turning On Issue, girlfriend had a Sony VAIO VPCEE42FX laptop when I moved in.. I'm a PC nerd, have always built my own systems, troubleshot countless issues, pretty affluent in many programming languages both high and low level.. basically, I consider myself, with experience and results to support this, more of an advanced user of PCs and Intel/Windows Environements Specifically (us old guys ONLY know a PC as an intel based rig running a Win/MSDOS based OS - but I think these days the term PC isnt exclusive when referencing them haha.. anyway)..
So I've been around the block and with some reference material and time I can resolve issues that arent a result of catastrophic hardware failures.
One day .. we go to turn on the ol laptop and the green power button you press lights up like normal, the audible tick of a fan or something else on the Power ON cycle can be heard however that's it...screen is lifeless, unchanged from the Power OFF state. I do notice that the Orange HD Access Indicator Light doesn't ever light up at all so I'm assuming that this isn't even getting to the POST stage of the Power ON process. (that's significant because I cannot tell you how much time I wasted watching YouTube videos and reading posts that were all the same info and suggested work arounds for "LAPTOPS THAT WONT POWER ON OR BLACK SCREENS!" Which is the title of most of these videos and posts.. All of them are good tips overall for laptops with regard to possible backlights or inverters being bad.. or Memory being bad etc.. however I believe that this particual Not Powering up randomly and progressively issue (as it did get to the point quickly that pressing the power multiple times would eventually get it to power up ... no longer worked and it appeared dead) on SONY VAIO machines is something else..
The system wouldnt get to POST so trying to cable it to an external display to confirm if it was a Screen Issue as they all try to suggest in the videos, was clearly not an option. I tried the battery pack tests..etc. NO JOY. Anyhow.. fast forward almost 2 full years later. I find the laptop and decide to see how dumb I really was and try to make this seemingly just faulty laptop work again (it was long out of warranty). I started out googling again... running into the same and even updated videos all providing the same possible solutions and not being any closer to having found a magic bullet as I was 2 years ago. But then... it happened!
I'll qualify by taking the tiniest bit of personal credit for getting this issue resolved on my machine but I was also just lucky. Here's how...
I had a reasonably strong suspicion that there was some sort of failure or glitch in the Power ON sequence that was happening before HD/POST Sequence but AFTER the Power Button push because as I said the thumb Power Button on the right always lights up as it should and it stayed lit as if the computer was powered on properly. Yeah I know, kinda obvious that the problem was somewhere before it powers on or it would power on lol. But the reason I'm glad I walked through it again was because I started thinking about what could possibly be shorting this Power Sequence and not allowing it to continue and activate the HD/POST....
Clearly there's a finite yet variety of components in there which could possibly be faulty/failed and causing the seq to halt. As I was thinking this I happened to notice my iphone almost out of charge because I'm using it to research watch the same videos over and over lol etc. So I figured well I'll plug the usb end into the laptop and charge it while I'm shining lights into the screen in hopes that it's the backlight as everyone wants to tell you even thoiugh I know that even if the screen was destroyed, THAT is not what was keeping this thing from completing the power on seq.
I saw some recently updated videos where people with laptops (not sony or any specific brand) were resolving a lot of problems by discovering a bad DIMM slot or DIMM itself. So I was hopeful that I'd be so lucky as to only need to grab another cheap set of RAM and I'd be back up with it.... I was wrong about that but didn't even get to checking the RAM (I did eventually check it just as mainteneance but this was after I'd resolved the power problem!) before stumbling on what seemed to get the laptop to complete the power on sequence.
Here's where the LUCK part comes in..
I had plugged in the USB end of the cable to one of the ports on the laptop... I then plugged the lightening end into my iphone and right as I was turning the phone on with mythumb I was also, for the 5000,00000000000th time pressing the power button on the VAIO... guess what? Powered right on.. Screen as bright as ever.. all indicator lights properly showing the work they were doing.. and within 1 min was back at the desktop of the previously thought dead laptop. Yay! I hadn't even put two and two together yet and just thought I'd been lucky and this was my intermittent power on and once I turned it off I'd be right back to getting 1 power up every 2 years...I immediately went into power options of Windows and made sure that the monitor or HD would NEVER turn off no matter how long idle.. etc. Just in case I had to walk away from the machine, I didn't want it to turn off again!
So I used the tme to pop in a Flash drive and pulled my lady's iTunes library off as that was really the only thing she was upset over when it stopped turning on. I had forgotten that I was doing all of this with the battery pack OUT and just in AC power because again, I was trying every dumb same workaround I'd seen suggested and tried 100 times before.. but I bumped the table and knocked the power cord loose from the laptop!! NOOOOO!! Without the AC power it immediately switched off because there was no pack in the bottom.
I was bummed.. I really did expect to never see it power up again or if I did it would be random and possibly 100 years from now. But I did get about 9k songs from her itunes library so I felt good and knew she'd be happy, So I popped the battery pack back in and plugged the ac adapter back in and tried to fire it up... Nada. Right back to Green Thumb Power On light but it didn't complete the sequence. Oh well.. I'l press a few more times before I pack it back away and call it quits.
Phone was still plugged into the cable which was still in the VAIO USB port because while it was on I was able to obviously charge it up.. i picked up the phone and it's the 6s+ version... the BIG one and as I often do, when I grab my phone I end up having mythumnb on the fingerprint home button and the phone unlocks and turns on unintentionally.. but I was also still pressing the power button on the VAIO in hopes of one more power up... guess what? The moment my phone powered on - the laptop completed the Power Sequence again and it was right back on... this is when I looked at my phone and it hit me.
Could the current going through the cable to the USB port when I turn myphone on have anything to do with the suspected short in the laptop power on seq? Only one way to find out... I bravely turned the laptiop off... unplugged my usb cable and tried for a good 10 presses to get a power up. No joy. So I plugged the USB cable back in and powered my phone up while pressing power button on the VAIO and sure enough... turns right on.
I can replicate this over and over and I have just to make sure it wasn't some insane coincidence. It isnt. The USB port getting juice was directly coinciding with the laptop powering on properly. So.. why? The USB ports worked fine meaning I never had any problem transfering data or anything, never found that the ports were dead ports etc... But I do know that win 7 (was the current OS on the laptop) had some strange options in Power Management for hibernating/sleeping the USB ports/bus just like it does the Screen and HD when it's power save modes are triggered... maybe the USB bus wasn't "waking up" and causing a short in the power up sequence? I'm not sure.
I haven't been able to do much to really drill down and test continuity or anything just yet as this is day 2 of having the VAIO back running and you can imagine the windows update process after 2 years was a bear. But maybe someone else will see this and it will give them an idea as to what causes this.
Sorry for the War & Peace novel but I'm really fortunate that I happened to be plugging my phone into that USB slot and powering it on (twice!) while pressing the laptop power button or I'd never have randomly tried that as a resolution.
I've also updated driver support for the chipsets that control the USB bus and haven't really had time to properly test wether or not that "fixed" the issue but I'm assuming it doesn't because if they added a firmware update to address something like that then I would've come across it somewhere in my searching as a resolution to this pretty widespread issue.
If you have a SONY VAIO laptop that wont complete power on sequence aside from randomly then give it a shot.. plug something into one of the USB ports that is pushing some voltage (if you have a cell phone just do what I did.. but make sure the phone is powered on when you try to turn on the laptop). and please post back any results!
QUICK STEPS:
Here's what should be an easy enough procedure for almost anyone nowadays.
Below is assuming Laptop is plugged into a power source and is powered off.
- Get a cell phone and a charging cable that has a USB end.
- Plug the phone into the cable
- Plug the USB end of the cable into any of the USB ports on your VAIO
- While the power on your phone is ON (you have your phone not just plugged in but ON) Press the Power Button on your VAIO.
- If youre worried about any special timing of buttons .. DONT. I've replicated this many many times to confirm it's legit. I've had success with the phone already being ON when I plugged it in and turned on the laptop and also when I waitd and powered on the phone right as I pressed the laptop power button (I was trying to test to see if it was the current to the USB slot from the phone or just the USB slot having a device in it - I only got desired result when the phone was ON either before I power up VAIO or right as I power up VAIO so I'm assuming it's the current being sent throuigh the powered on device that is correcting a short in the power up sequence or maybe waking up a faulty sleeping USB controller.. not sure).
Hopefully it saves someone's beloved laptop/data/mind.
Cheers!