Sony laptop battery problem

Hi Everyone,

I have a Sony Vaio VPCF-137HG with which I'm having a weird problem.
The problem is with my battery:
1- It keeps showing me "%100 remaining" as the battery status even when my AC Adapter is plugged in (This would normally be the status when the laptop is operating on the battery). I get this same status with my Fedora installation.

2- I'm unable to turn my computer on without plugging in my AC adapter

3- I did not go through the normal cycle of when a battery's up time would decrease with time. I used the battery around 2 days ago for around an hour and 15 minutes before having to charge it. But yesterday, I couldn't use the battery anymore.

4- My Sony control center tells me that the health of the battery is excellent (I don't know how accurate the software is)

The weird thing is actually the fact that when my laptop is operating through the AC adapter, it's actually thinking that it's operating on the battery (Windows and Linux).
Could this problem be a battery problem only?

 

I'm sure software is wrong and battery is dead.

 

Anzial,

Did you ever see similar symptoms? I don't want to buy a battery and later on realize that my problem is something else.

 

Download BatteryBar and see what that tells you.

 

not similar but yeah, I had a battery die on me which no longer worked with the computer or couldn't charge.

 

BatteryBar has given me the following results:
Imageshack - batterybar.png

Remember that my laptop is plugged in, yet the AC shows as disconnected!
Could this be a charger problem?

 

Looks more like a motherboard problem. What's your warranty situation? If out of warranty, you could try to get it repaired at your local computer repair shop. Sony charges a bundle.

 

My laptop comes with a 1 year warranty only, and I bought it a year and 4 months ago. I paid a fortune for this laptop!
But what makes you think that this is a motherboard problem?

 

if you have Battery Care enabled in VAIO Control Center, disable it. run the laptop for a couple of minutes, then re-enabled it. this (weirdly!) helped me once when my laptop decided to recharge the battery at an extremely slow charge rate (read from 4% to 8% in 8 hours!). after i did it, everything went back to normal.

 

Hey man, my problem is surely different. I have tried using my Linux Fedora installation, and got the same behavior as my windows installation.

 

What status does it show when the battery is not there at all? Does it show as connected?

The behaviour on Fedora is not conclusive. The system remembers the last set battery state (e.g. battery care function) until you install ISB utility, and then it resets to default behaviour.

You can try uninstalling and reinstalling the Sony utilities, but IMHO a fresh install - complete system recovery (C drive), or clean install, whichever you prefer, is going to be much easier. Save your personal files, etc. and go for it, that's what I say.

 

Thanks a ton for your help man. I had gone to the authorized Sony reseller in my country(Lebanon) before seeing your post. The technician there has diagnosed my problem as being a motherboard problem. He said that a replacement would cost me around $700. Yet I was surprised to learn that all their laptops have a 3 years warranty, which is more than great. He also said that the chances of this particular hardware problem are 1/1000.

Thanks for everyone's help.