Defective Nvidia chipsets in your current Vaio?

[DetlevCM]

By the way,
mikper83

If they don't want to repair your laptop, try to influence them by saying how happy you have been with previous products and how disappointed you are that they will not confirm the NVidia problem.
Also mention in passing that you'll submit that to a newspaper.
Apply some discreete pressure, while being friendly all the time.

In fact, I had a very positive experience with previous Sony products - the flip mechanism in a Sony Ericsson phone broke, but that's not directly Sony.
portable CD-Player, fell onto a stone floor, roled across a room, still works fine, MP3 player - perfect. USB drive perfect too.

[itssweeney]

I'm fearing that my FZ-190 might have just failed today... When I boot, there are a couple dozen vertical green lines through the VAIO logo and then, 10-20 columns that look like ::::....::::....::::....:::: comes up over a black screen prior to launching the repair console. That does nothing, and neither will system restore. I'm thankfully able to backup my files (which I'm doing as we speak) and have saved the most important things.

My warranty ran out July 7th, so I'm SOL there and already paid $30 for a Sony Tech support lady to tell me to do what I've already done. Next is to try and restore the HD to original factory specs and hope for the best. If not, off to Sony she goes for repairs. To think, tomorrow is my first day of classes too...

[JesterX]

Are the people with the problem gfx cards gamers or casual gamers? Do you use a notebook cooler while gaming?

[mikper83]

Do you have an account in www.club-vaio.com ?
If you do, please post this image in the Notebook section of the forum and I'll escalate it to VAIO Link.

I seem to have forgotten my username and password. And for some reason I can't get the Nickname and password retrieval to work. I've sent a mail to support. Hopefully I'll be able to log in tomorrow.

I'm fearing that my FZ-190 might have just failed today... When I boot, there are a couple dozen vertical green lines through the VAIO logo and then, 10-20 columns that look like ::::....::::....::::....:::: comes up over a black screen prior to launching the repair console.

That's exacly what my boot looks like.

Here are a few pictures of my boot up sequence:

[SPEEDwithJJ]

Now this is beginning to look interesting...

[luisarn]

I am sure a free repair will be available from Sony if a general nVidia problem begins to emerge.

I suggest all europeans users that is experiencing nVidia problems similar as mikper83 go to the www.club-vaio.com and post the photos and describe when the problem started for Sony to have more information to deal with.

The moderators on www.club-vaio.com could escalate this kind of problems directly to the VAIO support.

[mikper83]

I've copied what I've written here and started a new thread at ClubVaio.

Here's the link: http://club.vaio.sony.se/clubvaio/se...d?thread=56443

[true_freedom]

Yep, those are definetely symptoms of a GPU failure. This is exactly what my old Toshiba Tecra M2 looked like when its GPU failed. This is almost certain to be caused by the defective die packaging which is really unavoidable.

It sucks how you're out of warranty mate, but definitely you've got a case for a free repair and perhaps a warranty extension such as what Dell is offering its customers for the affected notebooks.

I wish you all the best.

[luisarn]

I'm fearing that my FZ-190 might have just failed today... When I boot, there are a couple dozen vertical green lines through the VAIO logo and then, 10-20 columns that look like ::::....::::....::::....:::: comes up over a black screen prior to launching the repair console. That does nothing, and neither will system restore. I'm thankfully able to backup my files (which I'm doing as we speak) and have saved the most important things.

My warranty ran out July 7th, so I'm SOL there and already paid $30 for a Sony Tech support lady to tell me to do what I've already done. Next is to try and restore the HD to original factory specs and hope for the best. If not, off to Sony she goes for repairs. To think, tomorrow is my first day of classes too...

Hi itssweeney,

I suggest you to take some photos and send it to the Sony support in your area. I could help you to escalate your notebook issue if you're in Europe

[itssweeney]

The weirdest thing has happened. After I used the Vaio Data Rescue and backed up everything that's important, I restarted my computer one last time and the weird artifacts disappeared and I booted perfectly fine into Vista. I have no explanation as to how I fixed it, or what was wrong. I guess I'm just going to pack up the notebook and bring it back to college since it is working.

Edit: I suppose I spoke too soon. Not even 5 minutes after I posted this, my machine froze up and when I restarted the green lines and graphic artifacts were back. Back to calling Sony Tech support...