This morning when I tried waking up my TR3A from hibernation.. what I saw was just a blank screen and a blinking cursor on left side. I consulted local technicians and read forums to gather courage for revoring system by using Recovery Kit. Finally I recovered the system and installed back my stuff.
After 2 hours I hibernated again and reached home. As soon as I pressed power button.. I realised nothing is happening except I can see Litted up LEDs of Battery and Power. I removed battery and power source and try rebooting but same!! its doing nothing.. no activity!! 
can anybody advice as what is the best action?  I am based in India
Thanks

It should atleast boot even if the harddisk is dead. Seems like some problem with the BIOS or may be even the power button.

Two Qs…

1. When you power it on, does the hard disk light flicker as if it was booting up, but you just couldn’t see anything?

2. Normally when you press the power button the screen changes from completely black to very-dark-grey - can you see this change happening?

Chris

sorry guys, I was not clear, I DO get a post, no problem, but after post there is that message that we all get when there is no drive found: Cannot Find OS.  I can hear the drive turning in this state, sounds like it’s looping, and the drive light is also flashing.  Interesting news! It did it again.  This time hibernation was turned off so that rules out that connection, but the fix was the same, insert the VIAO rescue disk one, boot up on the CD, see the message no drive found, reboot and all is well…well until the next time it happens.  Something is corrupting something…kernal perhaps?  Very strange but now I have to travel with the VIAO boot disk.  arg…
jigs

Hi Jiggy - was the first post you?

[quote author=“jiggy”]insert the VIAO rescue disk one, boot up on the CD, see the message no drive found, reboot and all is well

I don’t quite understand this. You insert the rescue CD, it says your hard disk wasn’t found (and aborts the rescue) and then the second restart is fine?

If so, I wonder if your IDE controller is misbehaving…

Chris

I would suspect the Hard disk but would do an FDISK and reformat before spending money.

:shock: THATS TOO STRANGE! That is me at the top of this post but the ID is all hosed…I don’t even know that person!!! how could that happen.

anyway, yes it’s true.  the VIAO rescue disk one is fixing the problem (x2 now) and there is no explaination for that either…IDE controller? possible eh?  So maybe the controller is forgetting there is a drive?  But why would the VIAO recovery disk appear to fix…hmmm…that could just be coincidence. This is an older box…2+ years now.  One of the original TR3s I suspect. Brand new hard drive however. I am wondering now if ALL the problems with hard drives that I have had are related to the IDE controllers…I mean if it was flaking out randomly and infrequently, and you don’t test the drive you pull out in another TR, who is to know? Anyway, maybe the Grooveman should check out that ID thing…I don’t like being someone else…I can hardly stand being myself some days…cheers,
jiggy

Odd indeed (both the ID thing and the hard disk). The reason I suggested the IDE controller was that (unless I’m mistaken) both the CD drive and the hard disk will talk to the laptop via the same IDE controller. It’s possible that once the hard disk has stopped responding, using the CD in some way “resets” the IDE controller, or at least makes it try again to communicate with the other IDE device. I’m making this up really - I don’t know much about how these things work.

One other thing - when you mention in the first post all this stuff about just seeing a blinking cursor and then nothing but the lights… are these just lies from your alter ego? They seem to be denied somewhat in your second post.

Chris

Regarding post
Jiggy Dude! Actually I posted this topic and somehow we have similiar
problem, so mistakenly u thought its ur post.

back to problem
I got the HDD checked but its working fine.  System is still not booting up!! on pressing power I just see battery and AC LEDs litting up but no activity on HDD LED. I dont see screen turning grey either. My system is with a local engineer right now who is fiddeling to find the problem and am sooo nervous!!

If anybody can hint what could be wrong?

Rahul,
thanks for ur continued support all the time

if the power button has problem… would it even initiate those LEDs? One more thing… if I again press Power button… it does not switch off… I have to remove battery to switch it off

How do I chk if there is smth wrong with BIOS?

aww geez that was me…either i am fat-fingering all this or my desktop has gone nuts. maybe we both have. gotta dry out for a few days…having too much fun…

Hi ANX (taxi for jiggy, I think…)

My guess would be that it’s a BIOS problem - or possibly one with your memory. If there’s a serious problem with a computer’s memory, it will often fail extremely early in the boot process as there’s very little it can do without it.

I would try taking out the memory chip(s) and switching it on - if it does exactly the same thing as it does with them in, try swapping them around if you’ve more than one.

If you know someone else with a TR (long shot, I realise) then I’d try their memory in yours.

Best of luck,

Chris

Thanks Chris for your post

I removed Memory (RAM 512 X 2) and tried checking if either of them is faulty.  Alas! system was same… just the battery and AC power LEDs blink sturdy (though I dint have AC power plugged in).

How do I check BIOS?

Any other help/guesses?

Have you tried it with just one chip in? I believe the TR should boot with one 512 in it. If that doesn’t work either, I’m afraid my diagnosis might not be very good. I had a desktop problem very similar to yours and it came down to one defective memory chip. If you were in London instead of India I’d offer to lend you my memory chips to try out. :(

I have no idea how you would check the BIOS - I’m afraid to say I think a dead BIOS might mean a dead TR. :(

Chris

Hi Chris

Yes I tried placing both memory 1 by one and still the same :-(

I am now more worried

Any Gurus to help?

yea ANX, sounds bad. by the way, my thread is over here and I’ll try not to muddle up this one ==> [url=http://www.siliconpopculture.com/sonytr/viewtopic.php?p=48343&sid=9bbe22731dc1fab57bc9f037c6922a6b#48343]http://www.siliconpopculture.com/sonytr/viewtopic.php?p=48343&sid=9bbe22731dc1fab57bc9f037c6922a6b#48343[/url]  My HD crapped out again…it was just running fine and the screen locked up with the drive light looping, then on reboot “no os found.”  Rebooting with the recovery CD got it going again for some unexplainable reason….arg..TRs :shock: