Hi chaps. I got a major problem. My Sony Vaio PC decided to take a masive dive. I was unpluging a USB camera when every thing whent dark!! and CPU cooling fans decided to go in to hyper drive. Now i believe the video card has gone but also the hardrive seems not to boot that includes the floppy with a dos disk. Is it possible that the mother board would have gone US along with the video card. This is the second time with my PC that the USB has created a problem. Last time all USB ports whent US and had to go back to Sony for repair but the rest of the PC worked. Every thing seems to be getting power from the PSU "I havent put a meter to it yet though" so whats your ideas.

When I switch on I now get no video signal and no boot up. All i get is the cooling fans going mad.

I am dreading this its got to be the worst time of year. HELP !

Disconnect everything not required for a base config, i.e. additional PCI cards etc... Remove the memory and try with just one stick, could be faulty memory.

Does it make any noises at all (bleeping error codes on boot up or similar)?

If you've got access to another PC try putting the Vaio hard disk in that as a slave, to check if the data is readable. Assuming there's stuff on there that you want of course.

If there are no beeps and no video it could well be a damaged motherboard.

Can you get into the BIOS at the start, or is there literally nothing apart from fans?

i had something similar with R40 (next day it was delivered on my desk) except the fans didn't work either..

reason was so simple that cooling fan wire wasn't connected properly so it didn't start at all.

could be something similar ie. bad contact on thermostat or something so your laptop thinks it is over heated and refuses to work in order not to cause damage to cpu etc..

Disconnect everything not required for a base config, i.e. additional PCI cards etc... Remove the memory and try with just one stick, could be faulty memory.

Does it make any noises at all (bleeping error codes on boot up or similar)?

No beeps. Just fans

it has gone to the PC doctor I should find out how much damage has been done later

Well bad news is the Mother Board has been fryed the good news is the hard drive is ok. Lesson learnt dont trust USB devices

Lesson learnt dont trust USB devices

I'm sure I've said that on several occasions. USB is the spawn of someone evil.