Has anyone had their battery replaced by sony?

My battery stopped working completely several months ago and I just now call sony tech support to try and get a new one. I made the mistake of mentioning that I dual boot with linux after which the tech guy told me I would need to use the recovery disks to completely erase both os's and start over because it was something on the linux side that was causing it to drain. It was either that or send it in for 7-10 days and have them look at it. I know for a fact it has nothing to do with having linux on there because a) the battery went dead before I installed linux, b) while booted into windows it never even acknowledges the battery as even being plugged in and c) if it was due to linux then I should at least be able to shut it down and have it charge up even a little but no matter what I do the battery will not hold any charge.

So for anyone who has had their battery replaced, what kind of diagnostics programs did they have you go through to find if it is the battery and not the computer? On a default install are there any extra sony programs besides the usual windows stuff? On mine all I have it the little battery icon in the tray which always just shows the plug icon instead since the battery is dead. There's no way I'm going to reinstall everything just to appease the tech guy but when I call back I'm going to have to have all the original programs there like its an original install just in case they try to walk me through some kind of diagnostics procedure.

 

I have an SZ110/B. I had my battery replaced by Sony twice.

The first time the battery life had dropped to less than an hour. I called Sony and they sent me a new one very fast with no questions asked.

The second time, I was sending the laptop in for something else so I noted that the battery was loose and they replaced the battery (the new one fits just a bit better than the old one).

Mark

 

I actually had my battery replaced today. I called tech support and the agent told me to reinstall "Sony Notebook Utilities" and "Sony Programmable I/O Driver." I never told them anything about having a multi-boot system, as I knew from past experience with other tech. support that they ask you to reinstall your O/S if you mention you've changed its configuration. It should be obvious to them that this is a hardware problem and not a software problem, but I guess they want to use that excuse in your case. Maybe you can get the problem resolved with another call (if they didn't write it in their records). If that doesn't work, try explaining that the battery LED doesn't flash when the computer is off and plugged in, and that the computer doesn't turn on with an apparently charged battery when unplugged from the outlet.

Edit: Model SZ-110/B