Strange (and somewhat urgent) problem. Halp!

I use my VAIO SR190 in a docking station. Today, I performed a routine shutdown through Windows 7 (64 bit). I turned the laptop back on, and the backlight of the screen turned on, but no splash screen, and after 10 minutes there was still nothing on the screen (and nothing showed up on the external monitor either, leading me to believe Windows had not booted).



However, when I take the laptop off the dock, and just plug in the power adapter, everything works as usual. This has never happened before.



Any ideas?



Tyia!

Reply 1 : Strange (and somewhat urgent) problem. Halp!

Did you try and put the laptop back on the docking station and see if it boots up normally? Do you have any other devices connected to the docking station when this happened like a hard drive, USB thumb drive, etc? I have had a few rare occurrences of the operating system not booting up when such devices were connected, and I mean rare. Probably happened to me twice during my 20 years of owning computers



mokeiko

Reply 2 : Strange (and somewhat urgent) problem. Halp!

I tried unplugging everything from the dock, and re-seating the laptop on the docking station. It doesn't even go to the VAIO splash screen. Very frustrating

Reply 3 : Strange (and somewhat urgent) problem. Halp!

If you can source a fine (I mean VERY fine) paintbrush, try gently cleaning out the contacts on the dock and your SR (where it 'docks' with the dock). And I guess pray the issue is some dust...



VGN-Z users and VGN-Z docks (back when they were being sold) were quite notorious when certain dock functionality began failing after a year or so, most notably the ethernet port. The issue you mention above, I remember reading somewhere, was another symptom. This was due to the repeated docking / undocking wearing and eventually damaging the connection.