The CD trick is a temporary fix to a permanent problem. The bad joints will continue to heat and open and can render the ram useless as well. There are no schematics that Im aware of and the soldering required is not quantum physics by any means, Just takes time and patience to get it right.. The DC connectors I generally cannabalize from older trash boards we buy for organ doners or they can be found new on E-bay as well as other places on the web. If you need help with these just yell..
Ken LaDere
http://www.ikenfixit.com

I was unable to get my FX370 to even power up in August. I took it to a local computer place who said a power spike fried the mother board and the hard drive and he wanted to trade services for the 'scrap' laptop. I said no and paid him, got the laptop back and filed a claim with my insurance company and moved on. Over the weekend I decided to part out the laptop. When I opened it up, he had replaced the CDRW/DVD with a 24X compaq CDROM, my 256MB chip with a 32MB compaq chip, and did not replace my hard drive with anything-it was gone!!....I'm furious especially after reading some of the similar power/boot problems. I'll be taking him to court!

Well thanks for all the info and the peice of CD fixed the memory. Now have any one had a problem with where the AC adapter plugs in and like gets loose? And then you are on battery power till you wiggle it? The connector in side looks secure and I can't get it to mess up from the rear of the connector from the inside of the computer? I have tried two plugs and its the same so I am guessing it the connector on the unit. Its a FX 370.

I had to replace my power socket on my FX370 to resolve the intermitant power issue. I just got worse and worse until I was unable to even get it into a position where it could at LEAST charge the battery up. It required a full disection of the inside in order to reach the component.

I had the same problem others have mentioned with the loosening of the ethernet and ac ports...and the battery charge issue, seeing as how I am student and the PCG-FX310 is my first laptop and it was my cousins old laptop I didn't expect it to be perfect... but when I had to place a text book under the power socket to maintain a charge I was not happy. I called sony and best buy and repair shops and all that and I got the "lil lady" treatment so I just gave in and sent it to Sony. I am assuming that sony replaced the power socket... and I was charged about 300 bucks which was a def strain on my college student budget. Me and my FX310 charged on through sophomore year and towards the end I needed to place a text book under the power socket to maintain power. At this point my ethernet port loosened up... and I bought an ethernet card and in a another "lil lady" moment, I spent way too much on it. Over the summer between soph and jr year I researched ways to solve the power issue once and for all and finally came to the conclusion that I needed to just buy a port replicator, I found out which one was esp designed for the FX310 on the sony web site and bought one off of ebay... This was in june, it's been working so far ( now its Jan). I will be happy if this laptop can carry me through the rest of my jr/sr year and I'll buy a new one for grad school.
p.s
Does anyone have pointers on taking this model apart, and putting it back together ?

I've tried the piece of CD on top of both memory modules but it still doesn't seem to recognize the memory in slots 1 and 2. Any other suggestions besides soldering pins?

Thanks Michael MC,

I tried your suggestion , and it worked!!

After months of changing memory modules, bios upgrade etc. etc. , finally!

Thanks

John

I just acquired a Vaio FX310 (PCG-995L). I'm able to get the machine to boot, but is it ever slooooooow! (15 minutes for a boot).

If I bring up the BIOS, should I be able to see the memory sticks' size in the main panel?

When I get XP Home to boot up and start the performance monitor, and then firing off the Lotus Office Suite install CD-ROM, I see that everything (page faults, memory utilization, CPU usage) are all well down in the 30% range, so the machine is not I/O bound as far as I can tell.

Really appears to be a memory problem....

WAIT! Just heard the start-windows chord -- I'll go and see just how much memory is actually showing....


2 256 Mbyte cards installed, and reading 384 -- looks like going over 256 MBytes in the second slot isn't being recognized. Is that possible?

More mysteries.....

hi guys
i have sony vaio laptop
and i got a problem.. i change the broken usb from the mother board and fix the new one
Now i got wierd problem like it stops at the splash screen of sony viao when entering to booting u all know guys bout that screen... and stops there no more movement from that part and i cant get into bios pressing f2 or f12
plz help me guys out of this as soon as possible
thanking u
sachin kapoor

Some of you are having problems with the A.C connector. I've copied this from my web site. Hope it helps.:

HP, Compaq, Toshiba and some others have problems with their AC adapter connectors on the motherboard. This is because they are not secured to the motherboard very well. They are just soldered to the board by the adapter leads. This puts stress on the leads whenever the plug is bumped or from plugging and unplugging the adapter. The adapter connector will, over time, become loose. The adapter will then not charge the battery, and when the battery becomes weak, the system will not power on. Some times, the unit will power on, but will shut off if the adapter plug is wiggled. If you continue to operate your system in this state, heat will build up from arcing at the ac connector and will burn the motherboard. If not repaired, the system board and CPU could be damaged beyond repair. Replacing the motherboard is then the only option This could cost $350 and up. So the word is GET IT REPAIRED EARLY!

This is what worked for me. You press the power button, nothing happens. But your power and battery LEDs are on. Let it stay like that for about 4 minutes. Shut down by pressing and holding the power button. Then press again, it should start.

John

john danpour said:
I'm very glad this worked for you. In most cases however, this will not work. Power connector problems, memory slot problems are a few of the problems with the Sony Vaio models. Most folks have taken to inserting sponge material over the memories and using that to press the memory into the slots when the memory cover is installed. Works for most people.

As to leaving the power on like that for 4 minutes without completing post, you may be cause damage to the CPU or the motherboard from heat.

The motherboard is already damaged, that's why it will not even load the bios. The fan is on while waiting the 4 minutes, so is the power and battery LED, so I doubt you will damage the CPU. Besides nothing else has worked for me, sponges broken pieces of CDs etc., this has worked every single time, since I discovered it. Anyway, just my 2 cents worth. Thanks.

John