I think my Vaio is dead.

urbanaries

Purchased 4-5-06. Yougottabekiddinme.

I got the dreaded blue screen and the Bad Image Checksum dll is corrupt error. The Sony folks want me to send it in to repair, since I can't even start up in Safe Mode...

I don't know whether I should pony up the $300 to get it repaired (meaning not having a computer for a month) or sell some lenses and get a MacPro....I was a mac girl for a long time before buying the Sony.....my iMac was still going strong after 5 years, the processor was just too outdated to use when I went dSLR. I got suckered into the "PCs are as good as macs nowadays for graphics, plus they're so much cheaper" pitch...

luckily I backed everything up (at least I hope...)

crycrycry

like roseanne rosannadanna said....it's always something....

cmason

recommend you give SpinRite a try. It's $89, and seems to get good results.

If you are familiar with Steve Gibson, and his PC security work, SpinRite is his "day job"

Scott_Quier

This is a bummer. This sounds like a software (Windows) problem, not a hardware problem. If I'm correct, something's happened to the operating system (OS) and it's confused. I've not personally seen this since the days of Win98, but I've heard of it happening with Win2K. Don't know that I've heard about it happening with WinXP with a good initial install. I have seen it when the disk to which the OS was installed was not properly formatted though.

The idea of SpinRite sounds pretty good to me. I've not heard of it before, but my quick research has pretty much convinced me that I need to buy a copy of that sooner rather than later.

If SpinRite can't solve the problem, something to consider doing before you hand the machine over to Sony -- If you have all your data backed up, a simple fix might be to re-image the hard drive, install your applications, and copy your backed up data back onto the HDD. Depending on the number of applications you would have to re-install and the amount of data you would need to copy back, this might be a pretty quick fix.

Be warned, doing this is pretty much a one-way street in that you will loose all data currently on the HDD. On the other hand, you already don't have access to the data on the HDD.

Another thought occurs to me. If you have a friend who is computer savy, it might be worth while extracting the HDD from your laptop , connecting it to another computer and backing up the data from your laptop to that second computer. On many laptops, there is a cover on the side of the machine, held in place with one or two screws that covers access to the HDD. Remove that cover and literally pull the HDD right out of the case. You will need to make a visit to some place like CompUSA to get a small device to interface between a standard IDE cable and the connector on the small laptop HDD. These can be had for between $6 and $15, depending on where you go. By copying the data you won't have to worry about lost data when you wipe and re-load your laptop.

This can be done. It's easy to do. I've done it more than just a few times.

Be warned - if you have to actually crack open the case to remove the HDD, you may be voiding your warrenty.

DavidTO

A month to get it repaired? Really? Wow.

You must have done something about this in the past 11 days since your first post on this....

Richard

I wouldn't give up without a fight. How far do you get in the boot process before it crashes? If you can get it into setup mode, set your optical drive as the first one to try in the boot sequence, then see if it will boot from the Windows disk that came with the computer. If it does--and runs OK--then you ought to be able to re-install Windows, possibly retaining your data. If Windows still won't come up, the next step is to try to run hardware diagnostics. There should be a hardware diagnostics program somewhere on the Sony distribution disk. Check your user manual or use another machine and check Sony's web site for details on how to run it.

If you can't even get the machine into setup mode, then you likely have a hardware issue. There's not a whole lot you can do to test this, but if you have more than one memory slot filled, you can try booting the machine with just one of them. Try each one in each slot, before you give up. If it works in any of the four combinations, that will tell you whether it is a chip or a socket problem. You can replace the chips yourself, but not the slot.

This is a fairly new machine and it may still be under warranty. If not, I would still consider paying $300 to get it fixed. Even if you are looking for an excuse to get the Mac you lust after. The resale value of a dead machine is very low, and you should be able to get the repair cost back and then some by selling it.

What a drag. Best of luck in finding a good solution.

Regards,

dragon300zx

First step is to reload it. That will most likely fix the problem.

urbanaries

DavidTO wrote:

A month to get it repaired? Really? Wow.

You must have done something about this in the past 11 days since your first post on this....

haha, yes i did, and i forgot to update the thread!!!

Before having geek squad come out and repair it, I begged my IT guy at work to have a look (mind you this is my personal/home PC) and he found a corrupted .dll file in the startup queue? Re-installed Windows XP and it seems to work fine now.....The first few days I got some strange Microsoft system error messages that required restart but no problems since.

Over me taking him out to lunch , He said installing more memory (I'm running 1GB RAM) might prevent this from happening again, something about a file getting overwritten?

Thanks all for the helpful advice, I didn't intend to post my problem and not share the solution this time!!!

Scott_Quier

urbanaries wrote:

Over me taking him out to lunch , He said installing more memory (I'm running 1GB RAM) might prevent this from happening again, something about a file getting overwritten?

Thanks all for the helpful advice, I didn't intend to post my problem and not share the solution this time!!!

If you have the funds to do so, get another GB of memory and you won't recongnize your computer. It's amazing what a little extra memroy will do for performance and data through-put. Well worth the investment in the time it saves you while you wait for the computer to do some of the more complex photo manipulations.

Don't understand how more memory will prevent a file from being over-written. Really, the only file that is directly affected by more/less memory is the O/S swap file and, maybe, the PS swap file(s).

urbanaries

Scott_Quier wrote:

If you have the funds to do so, get another GB of memory and you won't recongnize your computer. It's amazing what a little extra memroy will do for performance and data through-put. Well worth the investment in the time it saves you while you wait for the computer to do some of the more complex photo manipulations.

Scott,

I am so with you on this point. Once I had a few weeks worth of safety that was my immediate thought. However, I am hesitant and unsure what my limitations might be. I bought the laptop with 512MB and purchased another 512. It only has two "bays" AFAIK.

So, could I buy 2 x 1GB and get away with that? Or do I have to leave the "original" RAM stick in there? I would ask for forgiveness, but you already know I no comprendo.

Looking at the selection at newegg, the prices seem amazingly cheaper than when I was in Staples this afternoon...

Richard

urbanaries wrote:

So, could I buy 2 x 1GB and get away with that? Or do I have to leave the "original" RAM stick in there? I would ask for forgiveness, but you already know I no comprendo.
.

You don't have to leave the original one in there. The really lousy thing about laptop design is that with only two slots, most people can only upgrade once before they have to discard some memory to add more. If you think 2GB is the most you will ever need on this machine, then 2 x 1GB is fine. Otherwise, buying 1 X 2GB might be a better bet, as you can add a second one later. Downside is that above 1 GB, memory module prices go up fairly fast.

Regards,

Scott_Quier

with everything Richard said - no surprises there!

davemj98

Vaio
Glad to hear your up and running again. I upgraded my last Vaio to 3 GB and I would be embarrassed to tell you how many programs I run at one time. CS2 and 10MB Raw files are easy.
Regards, David