Vaio AR21M - Cannot boot with Factory Settings, see "!!" everywhere

[robertlinnmoran]

Has anyone seen this before?

Normal Boot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qfOKxnSkMU

Safe Mode Boot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe9ExIQN7OQ

Any suggestions on what may be causing this?

I've restored everything back to factory settings. Ubuntu boots ok in safe graphics mode, but not full graphics mode. I've run the HW/Memory check on the recovery partition software and nothing seems to be causing issues.

Thanks,
Robert

[littlebucko]

hi robertinnmoran
i had the same problem on my fw11m (using vista )after restoring twice it kicked in this was an error with vista its self

also it can be caused by defective memory or a bad hard drive

what i recommend you do is go onto the vaio recovery on the boot mode
then try restoring again if it still dosent want to no then try taking a memory module out and try booting up again.

[robertlinnmoran]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it's the memory or hard disk.

I took the laptop apart last night to find the root cause. I removed the hard disk, swapped the memory with known good memory, reset the bios by removing the battery connection and upon booting (only to a "no operating system" message) I still see the problem (loads of "!!" on the screen). I can only conclude that either my bios is corrupt and needs re-programmed or there is an issue with the NVIDIA graphics card (it doesn't seem like a connector issue).

I've given up the self analysis and am handing it over to sony to see if they can repair it....hopefully it's not too costly!

[littlebucko]

hi robertlinnmoran

"no operating system"
your operating system is installed on your hard drive if thats not working 100% then you will get this massage

and it wond be that much as you will find they will put a new hdd in and reinstall it