My TR3A keeps rebooting after 1 minute of being up, as if the power is being cut-off when something heats up. The battery charging light is blinking but doesn’t seem to get charged. The CPU fan won’t run when booting/ after booting (watching while keyboard is taken off).

Anybody got a motherboard or know what I should be checking for?

Thanks!

junnix at gmail . com

The TR has a powerboard - its right where you plug in your power cord. Maybe you check this first. Have a look in the open running computer, visaullly check all cables and then try to figure out what the power lost causes.

Christoph

Thanks. At first I was suspecting the capacitor right after the power jack. It’s a monolithic cap with no markings. I replaced it with a similar size 16V one and it didn’t change anything. Anybody have an idea of what specs this cap should be?

Max, don’t bother with the guess work, just get a new motherboard, I have one if you’re interested, parting out my TR3

Tr3a motherboard replacement easy? any link to instructions? and will it solve my problem?

I previously used this site (or Sony TR World) to replace my HDD for my TR3a. The instructions and pictures were really great as they made changing the hard drive really easy.

Are there any instructions here for replacing the motherboard and is it just as easy? I searched the web site but can’t find any instructions for motherboard replacement.
Are there any things to be careful of or I need to watch out for? (Like making sure the motherboard is compatible with my current hard drive connector) I was thinking of purchasing a replacement motherboard from ebay unless anyone advises against it.

My laptop has been great but recently it had a hard time booting up from being cold. Once it was running, it ran fine and I could restart it over and over with no problems.  However, when I would start from it being off for the night, it would freeze during the boot, over and over until it warmed up. I realized I could just hit F8 during boot up and wait and until it could sit on that boot option screen for about 5 minutes without freezing and once it could last 5 minutes without freezing I new I could then start it up. If it did freeze, I would just hold down the power button and try again with F8.  Now it’s completely dead and won’t even come one, or show the battery charging. Someone told me that replacing the motherboard would fix it. Has anyone encountered anything like this and does anyone have any tips or things I should know before buying a replacement motherboard?
Thanks for any help here.

Motherboard replacement is pretty straight forward. If you’ve gone through the HDD replacement, you’re only a few smaller (black) screws and power ribbon away from removing the entire PCB: DVD, wireless, and power cable need to come off ( I think that’s it.) I’ve torn mine down and built it back up twice in the past two weeks with no extra parts!