SZ worries - hope not static?

Just a little check with you all.

For some reason my OS sometimes won't boot - my guess is I broke it somehow -> fix: reinstall (already posted about it earlier in the OS forum)

Now:
Every now and then my SZ will claim my battery isn't a Sony one...

I wonder - it couldn't be a static problem?
I really hope not...

I'm currently not shutting down at all - just using standby and hope my recovery discs wont get lost in the mail (my mother sent them from the UK to Germany)

 

A lot of weird things like this on Sony notebooks can be fixed by resetting the bios. Try resetting them and see if it helps. There should be a reset factory defaults or something in there.

I that fails, unplug it, remove the battery, then the keyboard and palmrest, then pull the bios/cmos battery. It's a small disk at the very front of the chassis close to where you would find the fingerprint scanner.


While I can't say this will fix it for sure, I have seen it fix numerous boot/initialization issues on Sony notebooks over the years.

 

Why would the BIOS change?

But I suppose its something I can try before I head down the reinstall route - so I'll report back on Monday or Tuesday when I hopefully have my recovery discs. (I'm worried about shutting it down in case I can't boot it up any more)

Thanks.

 

Why would they change? Who knows, maybe get a setting corrupted and a reset fixes it. All I know is I have seen it fix quite a few Sony notebooks.

 

Well, I'll try once I have my recovery discs
Got nothing to lose then

 

Resetting bios will not corrupt anything on your drive.

 

Yes, but I might not be able to boot it up again
And my problem is that sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.

If I don't have my recovery discs I might end up without a laptop for a day or two - which would make it even worse for me as I am already plagued by boredom.
Yes, I could get my files off my drive using Safemode - but I might not get back into Windows in "normal mode" if it decides it doesn't want to.

 

Ooooh, okay, when you said the OS won't boot I thought you meant it wasn't even trying. That's different.

Unfortunately, most times I see this, the mobo or cpu is dying, occasionally the hard drive is the culprit. My advice, make a drive backup and hope it's only the drive. Considering the factory drive, you come out lucky. Very rarely will a restore fix this sort of issue.

 

Recovery Discs issue solver.

My "drive" won't die Intel Solid State Drive.

I had the suspicion that I somehow broke the OS (getting rid of IE9 preview maybe?)

But what had me a bit perplexed is the popping up battery warning.... which turns up... then may vanish... ah well...

And that battery pulling did nothing by the way - I tried...

 

Disable the Sony ISB utility from start up, which pops up the battery warning. Your battery might be nearing its end of life. How many hours are you getting with the battery?

 

Every drive can fail.

It's possible you broke something, removing I.E. has long been associated with problems. I won't be surprised if you haven't fixed it long term.

The battery popup is easily fixed, just like Coolguy said and has no bearing on your problem of startup but if you are running the original O.S. then your battery may be failing.

 

Well, the thing is - it happens, and then stops... I did take out the ISB utility on one occasion - right now it's OK.

I haven't used it on battery for a little while - but last I check wear was around 10% which gave me about 3 to 3,5 hours from 80% on my SSD (in battery saver mode that got 4-4,5 hours on the HDD when new)

 

You could be getting a bad connection at times maybe.

 

Do you mean the battery?

 

Yes.
If the battery connectors are corroded or the battery isn't inserted fully it can cause odd errors like you mentioned.

 

Couldn't imagine where corosion comes from - but maybe I should take some iso-propanol to them (got some from sensor cleaning 100%)

On that note - once that error popped up after I inserted the battery - on other times when I woke my laptop from standby - and at the moment its gone...

 

Is the battery pop up coming from the Windows taskbar (the power icon in taskbar) or the Sony software?

 

Any time you have dissimilar metals contacting you can have galvanic corrosion, metals also oxidize. Many high end connectors use silver or gold, even these can tarnish, but connect a silver and gold connector and they just destroy each other. You can also wear off the coating, which accelerates the problem.

In other words, you don't need anything for corrosion to start.

 

It's the Sony software - and 100% erratic - it might happen 2 or 4 times in a row - then its gone again.

Ah, OK.
Well, the Sony ones should be gold plated on both - I took some Iso propanol to the laptop side of the connectors (don't feel like pouring it into a battery).

So its most likely corrosion then?

 

Why don't you disable/ uninstall the Sony software then? If I were you, I would do a clean install to sort out any issue.

 

I'm not saying that it's most likely, just posting possibilities.

Try downloading Battery Bar and see what you find. This gives LOTS of information. It works best if you turn off battery care, charge to 100% then run it until pretty much dead. I found it quite usefull.
http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar/

 

a) because I'm lazy - especially with the driver order
b) because on my old laptop a clean instal was always worse - since then I prefer a clean recovery.

I can chuck out the ISB utility from autostart it I need to - I still wonder why it occurs - I guess corrosion or an oxide layer (which is corrosion) is the most likely cause.

I know battery bar - I chucked it off my laptop a little while ago, I might instal it some day again.

Right now I'm in Poland on prepaid internet - just writing this so you don't start wondering why I disappeared
And thanks for the replies - but it'll be a little over 2 weeks before I start to change something or download any software.