Home
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!!!!
Static electricity can kill your laptop. I recommend wearing an anti-static wrist strap while working with internal parts of your laptop.
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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!
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
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 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 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
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.
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 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 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 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 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
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.
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 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.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
thanks, for the tip that is really helpfull
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
October 4th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Thanks I have a VGN-FJ290 cant find the CMOS
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! ^^