VGN-AR41S blank screen and 3 beeps? Please help urgently!

[JanisDen]

My Vaio lap top stopped working and presented a blank screen. I can turn it off by pressing the on switch and holding it down. When I turn it on again, it makes 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps and presents a blank screen. I have looked for help and I am pointed towards problems with the NViDIA graphics or display. Is there anything I can do to access my files and to fix this? Many thanks if you can help.

[Blencogo]

Hi JanisDen and welcome.

The Beep Code suggests a Video problem with the nVidia 8600M GT graphics chip.

You can get a repairer to look for a poor connection but it is likely that this is a known fault that has plagued nVidia GPUs from that era caused by overheating.

Unfortunately, your model is not one of those that Sony recognise as having a chip coming from a defective batch, so a free repair is not available. You are probably outside the 4 year extended guarantee period anyway.   If you Google for "Reballing", you will find several repairers offering a repair service but I don't think a permanent repair is guaranteed without replacing the motherboard.

I presume you see nothing on the screen - not even the Vaio Logo spash screen?

Recovering your data from the hard drives will also be complex as you have 2 hard drives which are written to at the same time with a stripe of data going to drive 1 and the next stripe to drive 2.  Both discs are in RAID 0 configuration and you will need a computer with an Intel Raid controller to decrypt data on the drives.

Sorry I can't give you any good news - have a word with a repairer for an estimate of the cost of repair and likelyhood of a satisfactory outcome and take it from there.