I recently picked up a Sony Vaio laptop cheap because it was having
boot problems. It would boot only when you pressed on the dimm socket.

Looking at the solder connections on the ram memory dimm socket I see
that the solder joints are all very bad. They all look like what I
would call cold solder joints and there were many that were very loose
(a wonder it would boot at all, much less work properly after booting
when you stopped pressing on the dimm socket...)

The first question is have others seen similar problems where maybe
after a ram upgrade the laptop stopped working even with the original
ram re-installed?

I was able to resolder mine (using the wrong tool under a microscope,
literally) and get it working but this isn't something most people
should try.

I am wondering if Sony ever had a recall on these if this was a common
thing.

tj

terry.jones@utoronto.ca wrote:
> I recently picked up a Sony Vaio laptop cheap because it was having
> boot problems. It would boot only when you pressed on the dimm socket.
>
> Looking at the solder connections on the ram memory dimm socket I see
> that the solder joints are all very bad. They all look like what I
> would call cold solder joints and there were many that were very loose
> (a wonder it would boot at all, much less work properly after booting
> when you stopped pressing on the dimm socket...)
>
> The first question is have others seen similar problems where maybe
> after a ram upgrade the laptop stopped working even with the original
> ram re-installed?
>
> I was able to resolder mine (using the wrong tool under a microscope,
> literally) and get it working but this isn't something most people
> should try.
>
> I am wondering if Sony ever had a recall on these if this was a common
> thing.
>
> tj
>

Cold solder joints in both the RAM sockets and the video processor
opposite the Ram sockets are well-known problems on the GR-X,T, and V
series notebooks. There has never been a recall, much to Sony's shame
(my opinion). There are repair shops that can repair the solder if the
damage has not progressed too far into the GPU section of the mainboard.

Q