Sony Laptop powers down unexpectedly

[RichS]

Have a Sony Vaio laptop (PCG-F270) that powers down unexpected when windows 98 boots up. It does not do this in DOS. Seems to have become worse over time. At first it would power down once shorly after it was booted and then after a second boot it was fine for the rest of the session.

Now it powers down frequently immediately upon rebooting and at unexpected times after that during a computing session.

Any Ideas would be appreciated.

Rich

 

[paulwood]

This isn't something I have come across, maybe a video problem, are the drivers current, can you reinstall them.

Are there any hardware clashes in Device Manager.

The power supply, does it charge the batteries, do the power downs happen at any particular point in the charging cycle?

Other possibilities are a motherboard/memory fault or possibly, though less likely a failing hard disk.

 

[RichS]

Hey, thanks for the response. It is much appreciated as I am sure this problem could be difficult to diagnose.

The video drivers are current and there are no conflicts showing in the device manager. The power supply does charge the batteries and there appears to be no pattern in relation to the charging cycle. The memory was swapped for a chip with more mbytes recently but the problem existed prior to the swap and does not seem to have changed since the swap.

 

[paulwood]

Does the computer actually power down (so you have to turn it on again) or reboot?

The only problem I have had with a Vaio rebooting was to do with the built-in modem, but it was so obvious I'm sure you would have noticed!

However, what are the power-saving settings, had you added any new programs (of any sort) and for good measure, are your anti virus DAT files up to date? It is beginning to look more like a Windows driver or rogue program problem.