VAIO Notebook from the United States, hard drive almost dead

[lolker]

Hello there,

My VAIO Notebook from the United States has recently started dying and the cause was specifically the hard drive. I now reside in the United Kingdom. I do qualify for international warranty, I had purchased the VAIO around late June, with the manufacture date sticker stating March 2010.

I now receive the SMART Hard Drive error, indicating that I should backup all important data as the drive will be dead soon. It no longer boots up, however the VAIO logo still appears as normal.

I had contacted Sony EU support only to have never got a good response.

The first time I had tried, they had informed me that they would give me a call later on in the evening, which I had never received. The second time they said they were going through some sort of maintenance update and for me to try again tomorrow. I tried just now and an auto message informed that they are not currently taking calls.

I now am completely lost and have no idea where to turn to...

Thank you

[VAIOboi]

If you can get it back to a friendly US address that would be cheapest for you, they'll deal with it in warranty pretty quick.

There are a bunch of VAIO Repair firms in the UK now.  The list is here http://support.vaio.sony.eu/computing/vaio/contacts/asc.aspx?l=en_GB&m=VPCZ11Z9R_B They could give you a quote.  But it will smart a bit, spesh as you have warranty, just on another Continent...

If you have a VAIO with an easily accesible HDD, and the US option really isn't viable, and you have recovery discs*, you could always look online for a suitable SATA HDD...

*If you didn't make any don't worry, contact the US Support and they should be able to sell you a set.

[Blencogo]

If you have a valid International Warranty, your case should be dealt with by Vaio Support in Europe.

Clearly, you have not received the assistance you should and if you send me a PM with your Vaio's Serial number and Support Case Number (if you got one), I will escalate the matter with Sony for you.  If you don't have an open case number, please give me some contact details to give to Sony.

[iguyuk]

i have the same issue , my laptop is around 6 months bought it from US its a VPCEA36FM , its harddisk has slowed down and it takes windows 2 Hrs to boot and diag fails on disk test, Windows took 42 hrs to reinstall , i checked the serial number on Western Digital (WD) website and they would not support the warranty either . is there any way Sony would replace the drives ?