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These instructions explain how to take apart a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ220 series laptop. I had to replace the DC-IN power jack because it was broken. The jack is soldered to the power harness and can be easily replaced if you have basic soldering skills. Use this guide on your own risk.
You can search for spare parts for Sony Vaio VGN-FZ series notebooks here.
I created these instructions while taking apart a Sony Vaio VGN-FV220E but I think you can use them for entire VGN-FV220 line.
STEP 1.
Unplug power adapter. Unlock and remove laptop battery. Remove one screw securing the memory cover and remove the cover. Remove one screw securing the hard drive cover and remove the cover.
STEP 2.
Remove three screws securing the hard drive. Slide the hard drive to the left side and disconnect it from the connector on the motherboard. Remove the hard drive. Remove both memory modules (spread latches on both side of the memory module and carefully pull it from the slot).
STEP 3.
Remove two screws securing the DVD drive. Carefully pull the DVD drive from the laptop and remove it.
STEP 4.
Remove all screws (marked red and green) from the bottom of the laptop.
If you are taking apart the whole laptop, you’ll have to remove all screws.
If you are using this guide just for removing or replacing the keyboard, you’ll have to remove just four green screws (they secure the keyboard bezel) and after that you can proceed to the steps 7-9.
Again. If you want to disassemble the whole laptop, you’ll have to remove all screws from the bottom (red and green).
STEP 5.
Carefully disengaged three latches in the battery compartment. These latches secure the keyboard bezel. Push on latches with a small flathead screwdriver until they are unlocked.
STEP 6.
Carefully unlock two more latches in the DVD drive compartment. I wasn’t careful enough and broke one latch. :)
STEP 7.
You can remove the keyboard bezel with a small flathead screwdriver.
STEP 8.
Remove two screws securing the keyboard.
STEP 9.
Carefully lift up the keyboard and place it upside down on the palm rest. The keyboard cable is connected to the motherboard.
First, unlock the connector. Remove clear tape securing the connector. After that slide the LOCK (this part of the connector secures the cable inside) about 1-2 millimeters to the left using your fingernails. This will release the keyboard cable. Now you can pull keyboard cable from the connector and remove the keyboard.
WARNING! If you break the keyboard connector you’ll be screwed big time. The keyboard will never work again (until you find a way to repair the connector or replace the whole motherboard). Be careful.
STEP 10.
Disconnect cables pointed with red arrows. Disconnect three wireless card antenna cables pointed with yellow arrows.
STEP 11.
Release all disconnected cables. Remove screws securing display hinges (three screws securing each hinge).
STEP 12.
Lift up and remove laptop display panel.
IMPORTANT! You’ll have to go through steps 10-12 only if you want to remove the display panel.
In order to remove the laptop base cover and access the power jack, it’s not necessary to remove the display panel. It occurred to me only after I removed the display panel.
Here’s what you have to do. Leave all cables mentioned in the step 10 connected to the laptop and go to the step 11. Remove only two red screws from each hinge and do not remove green screws. Now you can close the display and proceed to the step 14 (removing base assembly).
STEP 13.
The display panel has been removed. I didn’t have to remove it but I did.
STEP 14.
Turn the laptop upside down and remove the base cover.
STEP 15.
Now you can access and replace the DC-IN power jack located in the top left corner of the laptop.
Do you see the RTC (CMOS) battery? I’ll explain at the end why I mentioned the battery.
STEP 16.
The DC-IN power jack was broken in many pieces. I unsoldered the broken jack and replaced it with a new power jack.
The power jack has been replaced. Now you can assemble the laptop following steps 16-1.
IMPORTANT! After I replaced the jack, I assembled the laptop back together, plugged in the power adapter, pressed on the power button and NOTHING! The laptop was dead! There were no LED lights or any activity at all. I tested power jack continuity with a voltmeter and didn’t find any problem. The motherboard was getting power but didn’t turn on. I thought the motherboard was fried. Just in case I unplugged the RTC (CMOS) battery from the motherboard, waited for 30 seconds and plugged it back in. Tested the laptop again AND it started like new!!!!
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
August 24th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Thnx Awesome work! ^^ …
I have VGN-FZ190FE and it´s the same body! I can reach heart easier that I tought! ^^
Greetings! ^^
October 4th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Thanks I have a VGN-FJ290 cant find the CMOS
October 24th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Hi, I have Sony VGN-FZ18G laptop and I have to clean the CPU fan and heat exchange as it was very dirty and your instruction worked perfectly.
Thanks a lot for such a wonderful description..:-)
Amit
November 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
thanks, for the tip that is really helpfull
December 11th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Hi, I only want to take apart my laptop to sand and repaint the whole thing. It’s all scratched up
Just wondering if I need to take out the memory and hard drive if I only want to take part the casing only. Also, how do you take out the silver border of the laptop where the SD card slots, headphone jack etc are? Thanks.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Jeffrey,
That means you’ll have to take the WHOLE laptop apart, not just the memory and hard drive. Maybe you should use a laptop skin instead? (Google laptop skin).
December 11th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
O no worries, I plan on taking apart the whole thing. I was just asking if I need to take out the HDD and the memory to take apart all the cases. I guess the answer is yes. Thanks for the reply.
January 21st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
i might add… this does not explain how to take apart the WHOLE laptop. i got this far myself earlier, but i want to get to the graphics card… if anyone has help to do with this matter please email me of msg me at lee_eburne@hotmail.com
thanks
January 21st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Lee Eburne,
Are you sure this laptop has a discrete video card? Isn’t it integrated into the motherboard?
January 24th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Yes, this is nice and helpfull, but where is the graphics card, it says it has a nvidia geforce 8600 GS GPU graphics card, so where is it I cannot find it inside
January 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Chris,
I doubt that you’ll find a discrete video card in this laptop. I believe the video card is a part of the motherboard, it’s not a discrete module which you can remove and replaced. If there is a problem with the video card, you’ll have to replace the whole motherboard.
Take a look at the picture in the step 14. Do you see a gray heatsink on the right side form the RAM sockets? I guess you’ll find the GPU chip under this heat sink, but it’s soldered to the motherboard.
January 26th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I have sony Vaio laptop (VG-FZ21E). This morning the laptop turned on and then the screen went black. The lights on the front of the laptop started to flash for a while and then the whole thing went dead. I tried to turn the laptop back on but if failed to work with either the battery or the power supply attached. I have tried with both the battery and mains power connected together with no luck.
Using your very good instructions i took the laptop apart. I checked to see if, when connected to the mains, power is coming out of the other end of the power jack plug, which it is nearly 20V. I checked the motherboard to see if any of the components look burnt out and it looks fine to me. I do not have much experience with electronics and I am at a loss as what to do next. Is there anything left for me to check to work out why my laptop will not start?
Many thanks
Sin
January 26th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Sin,
Unfortunately, I don’t have any experience at component level repair. From your description I can assume that you’ll have to replace the motherboard.
February 10th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Hi, great work!!
Do I have to remove any warranty seal till step 3?
My VAIO is broken due to an accident so I’m gonna send it to the shop, but I need to backup the hard drive first connecting it to another computer.
Waiting for your answer,
many thanks,
Ryan
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:18 am
Hi,
When i am switching on my laptop its giving a long beep seems like some problem in S-Video keys. Windows is not booting at all. If i removed my CD drive, the windows setup screen is coming up and no keyboard keys are working. Can you please help me on how i will disconnect S-Video and still continue to use my laptop. My laptop model is VGN-FZ240E. Thanks in advance.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:21 am
Please alo let me know how to remove the keyboard. I am not able to open it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Hello, nice tut.. does any one could help me.
I need the restore disks for an FZ190FE.
Will appreciate any help to afgarza@gmail.com
thanks
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
THANK YOU! This also works for taking apart a VGN-FZ240E. I needed to clean the lint out of the fan and heatsink was all that was wrong. Sony wanted close to $300. Like a dummy I broke one of the latches putting it together even after heeding your warning but it’s okay, not loose at all. Thanks again!
April 12th, 2009 at 8:52 am
A big thank you. My Sony VGN-FZ21S wasn’t powering up and I took it apart and disconnected the RTC clock for a few minutes and it now boots up. Amazing.
April 13th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Thanks for the walk thru. My son split his juice in the laptop while it was running the other day. I removed all power sources and let the laptop dry for the night. The next day I replaced the battery and plugged it in. When it started to boot I noticed the display was funky. Everything is a horrible shade of red, looks like its running in 16 bit mode and on a bad acid trip. I connected an external display to see if the GPU was shot, but it works fine. I decided to take apart the laptop following the directions above, which are great, but didn’t notice much wrong, except some stick residue. I checked the display connector which seems to be undamaged. Does anyone else have any suggestions as to what may be causing this issue? Oh and I have a FZ140E. Thanks a lot.
April 18th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Hi, this Tutorial help me a lot. But how do I get to the touchpad area? I have it open now. I can t find a way to get to the touchpad. Does anyone have a idea, what I have to do to get the touchpqad are free. Please mail me dilarien AT accfanmail.com
April 18th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Favour,
The touch pad is attached to the top cover. In order to access the touch pad area you’ll have to remove the motherboard first.
April 19th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Yeah, I see. I couldn’t/didn’t want to take it all off. My left button (touchpad) only works when I hit it. So it’s really anoying.
After all. I couldn’t fix it and now I got one problem MORE…
This part http://s10b.directupload.net/file/d/1769/h83dqv6m_jpg.htm (hope yoou can open it)
It felt down as I lift the mainboard. I wasn’t fast enough to see where it comes from. -.-
Now I didn’t build it in. The laptop works, but it seems to me that he is much louder.
Any pro got an idea, where this thing have to be?!
April 19th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Hi,
Found this site after I had taken the unit apart, but looks like I did it right anyway. My question is this, do you have a part number and supplier for the socket? Whilst mine still works it is intermittant, and when moved goes off, this means it gets much too hot and if not watched could be a problem. I have two of these laptops and I know it is the socket not the plug as it does it both supplies, and when removed and metered, you can replicate it.
Many thanks
April 19th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
acb,
Did you take a closer look at the motherboard? Did you find any stick residue on the motherboard?
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Thank you so much for the instructions! Just a note though that it doesn’t look like you have to remove the keyboard to get at the back of the motherboard and replace the power jack.
Also, having trouble removing the RTC cable, any ideas?
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Never mind the RTC cable comment above, it just required more force than I was giving it.
But, ~30 minutes after completing the repairs my keyboard stopped working. It worked great at first but now it’s not responding at all. I think I got it hooked back in OK, otherwise I’m thinking it wouldn’t have worked in the first place. Anyone had this happen?
April 26th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Thank you for this awesome article. I looked everywhere for something similar and thankfully I ended up here. This seems to work with the FZ series for what i read in the other comments.
I have a FZ150FE and the instructions worked perfectly. I would like to add that if you have (like me) to remove the RTC battery you don’t need to remove the keyboard (which I did). It is indeed a very delicate move and shouldn’t be done unless you somehow want to remove the display panel… or are willing to send your laptop to the service shop (which of course you don’t since you’re already disassembling it by yourself).
Peace.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hi, Great resource, thanks you.
I was only replacing the keyboard and found a few discrepancies. When removing the screws in step 3 you need to remove the “green” screws but also two additional screws. One is the screw to the left of the batter connector. The second is the screw in the upper left corner of the memory bay. I don;t think there is any real reason to remove the memory chips themselves or any portion of the HDD.
One question. I ordered the replacement part from Sony and they said I needed (and supplied) one piece of Kapton tape (10mm x 24mm). I didn’t remove any tape and didn’t see where this piece should be attached. Do you have any ideas? Sony could just be wrong as they sent the completely wrong keyboard he first time I ordered!
Thanks again. You saved me a lot of work.
May 13th, 2009 at 7:37 am
hey
i have sony vaio fz190.
my laptop gets overheat n i want to clean it up.
so di i have to follow same process, i mean removing lcd screen n all or i just remove screws n unlock…
May 13th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Hi i have an FZ260E and i have kept it ON for most of its life. I shattered the DC jack and plan to replace it however the battery life seems to have about 30-40 SECONDS. So if there is any interruption of wall socket power while i am away from the laptop it turns off! Very annoying! Any idea why my battery doesnt hold a charge? Also my laptop was getting extremely hot for a very long time, so hot that the laptop would be painfully hot to the touch. I finally opened it up and cleaned out the heat sink a couple weeks ago which was completely full of dust.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
The battery is knackered. Batteries need to be regularly discharged and recharged. Being connected to a charger all the time with no discharge will eventually kill the battery.
You can try discharging it completely and charging several times, see if the life comes back but I would say it’s new battery time.
Simon
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Many many thanks!!!!! With the help of this guide i can finally clean the fan of my vaio FZ11z!
Everything goes right apart from the latch in the dvd drive that i broke just like you, but theres no problem from this!:) Very thanks! best regards
May 29th, 2009 at 6:24 am
I just need to replace the DC IN jack. Do I still need to remove the keyboard? Is there a way to just remove the back cover and access the DC IN jack?
May 31st, 2009 at 5:20 am
hey i just want to clean my laptop’s cooling fan.
so do i have to remove keyboad?
any tell me which are the required step i have to follow.
plz it’s very urgent
May 31st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Sanjay,
Nope, you’ll have to go through all disassembly steps.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
CHIRAG,
You can try cleaning the fan without removing anything. Find an air compressor or buy a can of compressed air and spray it into the fan grill on the bottom of the laptop. After that spray air inside the grill on the side of the laptop. This will remove most of the dust from the heat sink and fan.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I have a VGN FZ260E that just went to crap. I took it apart following the directions and had no problems. Now the amount of dust between my cooling fan and the copper air cooler was FULL of dust and was totally clogged. I guess this is what burned up the NVIDIA processor.
Now I’m trying to find a motherboard for a reasonable price. I found one but it’s 439.00 dollars. I was expecting less. I bought the computer DEC ‘07 and it was around 1500.00.
If you have one of these FZ series computers clean the fan heatsink and vent a lot or you’ll burn yours up just like I did mine.
June 9th, 2009 at 6:00 am
Hi,
first of all I wanna say thanx for the helpful instruction. I’ve just got one question left…
I need to remove the keyboard, do I still need to disassembly HDD,Dvd drive etc (which are the first 3 steps), or can i simply proceed from step 4 by removing the four greenmarked screws?
June 18th, 2009 at 6:49 am
Great job man!
Now one thing, as many above i need to clean the fans and the main heatsinks of the laptop. In order to do that, what steps should i take ? tnks in advance
June 21st, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Hi i have a VGN-FZ140E ,my window took forever to doad at the black screen,i have try to boote all difference way ,even the sony VGN-FZ100E serial recorvery disk.it stay at the black sceen.
but when i tried to use the the sony recorvery dick K serial ,it took to the blue page and loaded the files and at last ,it said “the wrong disk” plese help
June 21st, 2009 at 6:38 pm
do I have to do all these things to replace the DVD drive, or can I just remove the screws and take it out?
(my FZ needs a new drive)
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:14 pm
You are a god amongst men, great guide!
My computer crashed and wouldn’t start up or even acknowledge it was connected to power. I decided to crack it open and unplug the RTC battery for a while and replug it back in. The laptop was good as new after your guide and I am a proud owner of a functioning vaio once again!
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Thank a lot for your guide. Awesome job.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
kheimbuch,
You don’t have to go through all these steps. Simply remove two screws securing the DVD drive and pull it from the laptop.
June 24th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
someone,
1. Buy a can of compressed air and spray it into the air intake on the bottom. After that spray into the grill on the side. This way you will remove most of the dust.
2. For complete cleaning you’ll have to go through steps 1-13 and remove the bottom cover. When the fan is exposed you can clean it.
June 28th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Can I use this guide to clean my fan and heat sinc?
By the way, the guide is great!
Talal
June 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Talal,
Why not? The heat sink is shown in the step 14.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Hi, is it possibe to see a close up of the heatsink and fan assembly on step 15, or a larger image of that picture displayed?
June 30th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
first of all thanks for the guide it worked great. my problem now is that when i boot up it says no operating system found. any idea what i did wrong?
July 1st, 2009 at 8:45 am
Kris R,
Most likely you have a software related problem or bad hard drive.
1. Try reinstalling original factory software from the recovery disc. This will load your laptop back to factory defaults. All data will be erased from the hard drive and rewritten, so do not forget to back up all personal files first. You can do that using these methods: How to back up files from laptop hard drive.
2. If reinstalling software doesn’t help. Try replacing the hard drive and reinstalling software again.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
So I decided to spray out my laptop with compressed air… without opening it. Later that night… Shutdown due to high temp. I thought for sure the fan was gone, because it had never failed to cool this laptop before, and that’s saying a lot; I live in the Caribbean. Thanks to this guide, I was able to open up my laptop without breaking anything… besides the fragile piece of plastic just under the SD slot (vgn-fz290 btw). To find out I forced all (most) of the dust to form a huge ball which wedged my fan and stopped it from spinning. Thank God it was a brushless fan, lol.
So thanks guy who wrote this guide, you saved me the cost of a new fan, which seems quite expensive @ $65 (for that tiny fan? wow, I usually pay about $4 for good pc fans!)
One note, on the right side, the VGN-FZ290 has an additional cable from the lcd panel to the motherboard, dunno what it’s for, but if you’re using this guide, remove it before trying to move the lcd, lol.
July 13th, 2009 at 2:23 am
thank you so much for this guide! if only i had found this before! i could have saved my laptop from dieing! i have fz21m and the graphics card is gone on it! i have funny artifact during boot as well as in windows! sony wants 500 pounds to replace motherboard! i am not buying sony anymore!
July 19th, 2009 at 12:50 am
chokedup,
Me either! I had one Sony before and found that out of warranty parts for Sony laptops are VERY expensive. I’ll stick with Toshiba.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
This is wonderful.. thanks for the help..
I have VGN-FZ150E and need to replace the motherboard.. Can you please direct me to the direction if available or add some next steps to go motherboard level?
July 25th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Thanks for the perfect guide dude.I had temperature problems with my vgn-fz140e and with this guide i was able to disassemble it without any problems. I removed big chunk of dust blocking the air flow and now temperatures are lowed with 30 C when the CPU is with 100% usage.
July 28th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Great guide to taking apart.
I’m having the ‘Dead Graphics Card’ problem. Is there ANYTHING that can be done, other than sending back to Sony and paying a ridiculous amount of money???
I know the Graphics Card is situated on the Motherboard, but where exactly?
August 4th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Hi I am having Sony Vaio CR320E , I want to clen Fan and check if there is any dust on vent or on CPU . Can you please send me steps if possible with screenshots that will help. Thank you.
August 16th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I want just to thank you guys.Great job!
August 21st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
For my Vaio, a VGN-FZ21Z, it was simply a case of removing the RTC battery for a short while and, low and behold, the thing is up and running again! Thanks so much for putting together this guide!
August 26th, 2009 at 7:59 am
This is a great guide! It helped me alot im my case. I just wanted to clean the whole thing
.
thank you!
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
This was amazing. I have a VGn-FZZ140E that hasn’t been working for 4 months and I thought it was because of a power surge. I just removed the RTC battery and then put everything together enough to turn on the power and it worked! Saved me over $300 in repairs because I did it myself.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Hi, well first of all tnx for ur awesome guide.
I have a VGN-FZ190 which used to heat up a lot recently. Yesterday I was working with it and sudenly I saw weird “ant” shape stuff appearing on my Vista desktop then I got a blue screen but the blue screen is also messed up and flaky and u can’t read anything. So I reinstalled Vista and boot it. It worked fine but again after 10 min the blue screen appears and all I can do is to restart the laptop. Sometimes it boots but most of the time I get the blue screen right away.
Any idea of what I can do?
I’m a student and I really need my laptop.
Thanx
Cyrus
September 19th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Cyrus,
It’s possible that your problem is related to the memory. Do you have two memory modules installed in your laptop? Try removing them one by one and test the laptop with only one module in place. If one of the modules is bad, the laptop should work fine when only a good module is installed. Remove memory modules one by one will help you to find a defective one.
September 30th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I;m using FZ 150E and in a fine day it suddenly turn off when I’m using, can not turn on again (the led lights aren’t on). I don;t know what happened, I will try unplug CMOS pin and re-plug , if it still does not help, I throw my laptop to the wall !
btw, this is a great guide, ty so much !
October 4th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Does anyone know where to get the fan and heatsink for VGN-FZ21Z? I have tried ebay but they are all used.
Thanks in advance
Talal
October 27th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Thank you for a very useful guide. I’m always concerned when it comes to open a laptop but with your directions it couldn’t have been easier.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:10 am
This guide is brilliant but I wish there was one as detailed to show how to get at the fan of my vaio FZ21Z so I can clean it and stop it from overheating – otherwise I am going to have to be without it for ages whilst the computer shop does it. Its really annoying that laptop makers dont make it simple to slide the fan out without taking the whole thing apart, so it can be cleaned monthly
November 17th, 2009 at 3:44 am
thank you , thank you, thank you for that trick with disconnecting battery for 30 secs.
I came home last night to find that my laptop was turned of, what was stranged cause it was running when I left home.
And it didn’t respond to power button anymore, so after googling, I came to this guide, et voila. Up and running again!!!
thx man
November 17th, 2009 at 9:35 am
lorenzo,
You are welcome. I’m glad that disconnecting the battery fixed your problem. This trick helped me a few times before.
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Brawo…. THX !! :]
November 22nd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Great writeup! I have a Vaio VGN-FZ340E and it seems the modem isn’t working because nothing happens when I have an ethernet cable plugged in. I tested it with other cables that I knew had internet access, so I know it’s something with my computer. Did you happen to notice if the modem is soldered in like the power jack is or how it’s connected?
November 25th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
OMG GUYS PLZ HELP LOL:|, I disassembled my laptop and I am stuck on one step:| BECAUSE I FORGOT THE WIRING:| ., HOW STUPID OF ME.
STEP 10.
Disconnect cables pointed with red arrows. Disconnect three wireless card antenna cables pointed with yellow arrows.
What order do the three wireless carrd antenna cables go?? theres a black, grey, and white atennas!!
HELP PLZ:(
November 25th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Manny,
From top to bottom: black, white, gray.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Thanks Lt Tech. You guys Rock!
November 27th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Jeremiah,
It’s possible that you have a software related problem. Check all network settings on the laptop. I cannot tell you what is wrong with software without looking at the laptop.
As a last resort, back up all files and reinstall Windows and device drivers from scratch. If the network port still doesn’t work, it’s a problem with the hardware.
Could be bad network jack or faulty motherboard.
There is no such thing like eithernet modem. The network card is integrated into the motherboard and when it fails, the whole motherboard has to be replaced.
December 19th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
hi all,
I have got the same problem i.e. broken DC Jack. I would like to know that if the DC jack is same for various series of vaio laptop.As the link is provided on ebay. I have got VGN-FZ18E. Looking for your help
best regards
December 21st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
moda,
You should contact the seller and ask him this question. It’s possible that you have a different jack but I cannot tell without looking into the laptop.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Hi again, I tried what you mentioned with reinstalling Windows; I actually upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista, but I’m still having the same problem. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Would you recommend getting a USB or Express Card ethernet network adapter and just bypassing the original network jack? It seems like replacing the motherboard is out of the question, as it would be too expensive. Thanks.
January 12th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Hello again, I was just wondering if you had any suggestions to my previous post about possibly buying a new USB or express card ethernet adapter. Thanks.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:53 am
Do you know that someone is making money by selling this free guide over the ebay?
not really correct, IMHO.
March 1st, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Hi, thanks a lot for putting this brilliant guide up! My laptop (VGN-CR11S) died last night, no lights any or anything coming on.
As most of the results for google suggested the comp was destined for the bin, I thought I would have a look inside to see if I could identify what went wrong.
I found this page whilst looking for disassembly instructions and that battery trick has saved me a few hundred pounds.
Thanks again.
March 2nd, 2010 at 2:52 pm
GratefulJimmy,
I was very surprised when disconnecting the CMOS battery worked for me. That’s why I mentioned in my guide.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Is it required to remove the screen and keyboard to remove the back cover? I just want to see if it is possible to take out the heatsink and apply a better thermal grease.
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Jason,
I think the display (and because of that keyboard) has to be removed because screws on the hinges are connected to the back cover.
March 5th, 2010 at 5:16 am
Great guide and fantastic opportunity to save ££s by doing the repair yourself. I have just replaced the keyboard on my Sony FZ11M using this guide
Note if replacing keyboard you can jump straight to Step 4 and miss out Steps 1-3 but dont forget to remove the battery first
At Step 4 you not only have to remove the four green circled screws, you also have to remove the four red circled screws where the battery compartment is in addition to the one red circled screw where the memory housing is
On my model FZ11M (UK) these screws secured the keyboard in place in addition to the other screws
Once I realised this it was relatively straightforward to remove the keyboard and fit a replacement one in. Also be aware the keyboard cable connector lock flips upwards and you have to slide the keyboard under the lock and then secure it.
This isnt explained clearly in the guide but in fairness the guide refers to the removal and not replacement of the keyboard
All in all well chuffed i was able to use this guide and fit my keyboard