Name: Vanessa
I was recently given a great Sony Vaio laptop from my professor who says she
had it examined by some tech guy who broke it. The mouse works but the
keyboard won’t connect to the screen. I use a wireless keyboard instead,
which is a pain, but workable.
My question is this; is it worth putting money into fixing this keyboard
problem? It sounds expensive and like a huge hassle.
Also, what could have happened to this poor (but awesome) laptop to
disconnect the keyboard but leave the mouse/cursor fully functional?
The tech that broke the keyboard likely tore the laptop apart for some reason and either ripped the small (and often fragile) ribbon cable that connects the keyboard to the motherboard, or simply didn’t reconnect it. What I’d suggest doing, if you or someone you know is feeling up to it, would be to pull the laptop case apart and see if the cable for the keyboard is either damaged or simply not connected.
You’ll want to be extremely careful if you do decide to pull the laptop case apart, as it is entirely possible that you could break the connection to the touchpad (or trackball or whatever pointing device your laptop has) as well.
It’s definitely worth checking out, because if it’s nothing more than the cable being disconnected then you could have the keyboard functioning in short order.
Responses to “Sony Vaio Broken Keyboard Question”
June 13th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Likely when the laptop hit the ground it snapped something in either the power supply or the regulator for the battery. Your laptop pulls more power while booting that during normal use because it not only must load an excessive amount of information from the hard drive, but must also process and store it in RAM for later use when the OS is fully loaded. Once the load on the power is too great, it trips gives you the loud beep you describe, and powers off.
It may be fixable, but it likely won’t be cheap. Unless there’s an extended warranty on the laptop they likely aren’t going to cover it because it was an accident. Most base warranties only cover manufacturer defects.
Take it to a repair shop and see what they say, but tearing a laptop is time consuming and so labor is going to cost quite a bit I imagine. I’d suggest seeing if you can send it back to the manufacturer to be repaired since a local repair shop will almost definitely not have the replacement parts on hand. (Much of a laptops innards are specific to that model)
In short: Can it be repaired? Maybe, but it’s gonna cost ya.
June 13th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I recently dropped my daughters sony vaio laptop about 3 feet. It landed on the side. Now when it is turned on, a screen comes up that says there was a break in the power or the reset button was pushed, and then prompts the operator to load windows (safe mode and other options). I tried them all, but after a bit, the screen goes blank and I get a high pitched beep. Is this fixable or do I owe my daughter a new laptop?
Mother in hot water