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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!!!!
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!
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 16th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I want just to thank you guys.Great job!
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.
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?
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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?
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 29th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Talal,
Why not? The heat sink is shown in the step 14.
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 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 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 23rd, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Thank a lot for your guide. Awesome job.
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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Sanjay,
Nope, you’ll have to go through all disassembly steps.
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 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 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 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 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.