Vaio XL301 Display Problems

[jboyleuk]

I have a Vaio XL301 media centre with Vista Home Premium connected to a Toshiba WLT68 LCD TV using a HDMI cable.

I have had problems from the start getting a reliable connection between the two and a lot of times when I switch the TV on and change from another input such as a SKY box on Scart to the XL301 nothing displays on the TV. Sometimes it does display ok and at other times the TV flickers for a few seconds thinking there is nothing connected on the HDMI input and then that there is something.

It nearly always ends in the power being pulled from the XL301 and a restart to be able to view a DVD or something else on the XL301.

Another problem has started happening recently in that no sound can be heard until the HDMI cable is pulled out and reconnected to the XL301. This sometimes ends in the power being pulled from the XL301 as the display does not always re-appear after re-inserting the HDMI cable.

This has made my £1000 purchase a bit of a pain and at times useless. I may as well go back to having a £30 DVD player connected to the TV as the amount of grief I get from my little boy when he wants to watch a DVD is becoming unbearable.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can go about resolving these issues or does anyone think that Sony support will be any help if I contact them?

Thanks very much.

[timround]

I feel your pain!

I was hoping to replace my freeview HD recorder with this, but I've had nothing but trouble with it from the moment I turned it on.

It is worth contacting Sony support, they've suggested various Microsoft hotfixes, which have improved things.

There also appears to be a firmware update for the video card, which recently appeared. See the "New graphics drivers and HDMI firmware for VGX-XL available " post.

I'm getting closer to fixing the issues, and when I do I'll post full details of all the hotfixes, drivers, etc.


Tim.

[jboyleuk]

Thanks for the info, I'll check out the firmware update.

I'll keep an eye out for your post if you get things sorted out.

Thanks again.

[h4]

i have my toshiba 32c3030db connected to my xl301 and seem to get exactly the same problems.. sometimes i need to reinstall the sound driver to resolve the sound issues. sometimes restarting media centre resolves it.

the 'no picture' issue is more irratating. the hotfix from vaio doent seem to have worked

i posted these problems 2 posts up. sorry i didnt actually check this post!

[jboyleuk]

I have now installed the HDMI firmware update and rolled back the Video driver as per the Sony update. The sound issue now appears to be ok but I'm back to the same old no picture problems which has never been resolved.

I connected the XL301 to a monitor using a HDMI to DVI cable and switching between inputs and opening/closing the Media Center program was instant and not the stuttering mess of not having a connection/having a connection that it is with my Toshiba TV.

One thing I have noticed is that the monitor has a resolution of 1280x1024 and all is fine but when the TV is connected to the XL301 there is no perfect resolution and the one that works best (1280x720) means that all edges are cut off when viewing the Vista desktop.

The whole concept of the XL301 is great but it is just too much bother with the problems and surely that should not be the case when paying out £1000 for a device.

[NickJames]

Hi, i'm afraid I can't be of much help, but wanted to know I also feel your pain! I also have the XL301 plugged into a brand new JVC HD 40" TV, and since the beginning I have experienced similar faults. When switching the tv display back on to see the computer, sometimes the screen is completely blue, sometimes completely black, and sometimes it said the graphics display driver had stopped working, but displays ok. The only tip I can give you is don't update the graphics driver, as before I did the problem occured roughly once a fortnight, and after it was at least 4-5 times per day. In addition, the sound on the media centre stopped working for the tv and radio - but not library music or my mp4 video collection. The sound used to come back after a reboot, but then it just didn't work despite many hours testing the sound settings and rebooting again and again and again. Then I started getting 'insuffucient memory available for the display driver' messages, needing more reboots. In fact, as we speak I am undertaking a complete wipe and reinstall and cetainly won't be updating the graphics driver this time round. Media centre programme is working fine at present, just need to get all my printer drivers reinstalled etc.

I'm amazed at how fragile this is - £1000 would have bought me a ps3, xbox360 and plenty more, but I wanted the 'luxury' of having a media centre, which seems stupid now with the amount of time I spend trying to get it working. With what I know now theres no way I would have bought this thing.

Hope you manage to find a solution to your problem, I'd suggest trying a different hdmi cable and different socket on your tv if you have one, because the crackling you mention that sometime occurs must be a poor connection or cable. However the completely blank screen seems a commmon problem with no solution at present (check you've turned screensaver and timed power shutdowns off also).

Nick

[Branigan]

I have had exactly the same problem & rarely seen anyone else come across it on the web, until I visited this forum. I have researched this for hours on the net & contacted Nvida & found that the problem is mainy vista forcing edid (display detection) which causes the pc to stop working if it has no video output. Nvida told me that there was a product that i could buy for around £60 - a dvi adaptor that tricks the pc into thinking that it has an output, but the 301 does not have a dvi out nor do I want to pay 60 quid for something that should work already. Does anyone out there know how to disable the EDID on this machine, like everyone else Im far from happy with this.