SZ Battery Not Charging

We purchased my wife's Sony SZ680NWC back in May 2008. Used it mostly tethered to the wall for 10 months. We then used it on and off with battery until early June 2009 and packed it away.

Yesterday, I turned it on with the battery in and tethered to the wall so I could back up some data.

The battery light was blinking and Windows XP shows that it was charging. It remained at 0% for hours. I turned it off and left it plugged in so the battery could charge. I woke up this morning and found that after 10 hours, the battery light was still blinking. Turning it on, I found it was still at 0%! There's no power to even run for 1 second unplugged!

I've unplugged the battery and power adapter. Held the power button and put the battery and power adapter back in. Still doesn't charge.

I'm stumped. It indicated that it's charging so I assume the charger and battery connectors are ok. Can't imagine how a battery can go south while in 6 months of storage.

The battery is the stock battery I got with the system, a VGP-BPL9 6 cell Sony extended battery.

Not sure if it's the same problem as adamcirillo (without a solution in the end) or this one from danS_GER (though his did not blink to indicate charging status, mine does).

 

Sounds like the current still flows into the battery (blinking battery indicator) but the battery is not storing any charge. A similar thing happened to a device I have with Li-Ion battery. Left it a few months unused and when I try to charge it, battery indicator was blinking showing it's charging, but battery wasn't storing any charge after charged overnight. Battery was then replaced and it was working again. Li-Ion weakness perhaps if completely unused and uncharged for a while?

 

I was thinking that too but didn't think 6 months of storage would completely kill the battery. I've had several other laptops that had been in storage for longer periods and the battery still worked fine.

Sony originals are not cheap...

 

Yeah tell me about it, expensive Sony batteries...
Hey, if you have a friend with a Vaio SZ, maybe you can try his/her battery on your SZ. This is if you are still unsure if the battery really needs replacing.

 

Weird. I left it off and plugged in for the last 5 hours. Noticed no blinking charge light, turned it on and the battery is at 100%. Unplugged the AC for 10 seconds and it ran fine. Plugged it back in, battery said 99% and too a minute to charge back up to 100%.

Was there some type of warm up period after storage or something?

Well, this is a positive development. Gonna play around with it to see if it's back to normal.

Thanks, ShadowFlare for your input.

 

Nice to hear that it works again.

 

Just on a side note:
Batteries can just randomly fail - that happened to my SZ7 after 2 weeks - I got a new one after battery.
(Didn't want to hold any charge, indicated 100%/80% though...)