vaio C1-MWP battery don't work although fully charged

Hi, After purchasing the C1-MWP on ebay, I've found out that battery holds charge for no longer then 5 minutes. I went shopping for a replacement battery and found one from China, which seam to be good replacement but although is seam to charge (battery indicator blinks) the laptop will not run when power cord is out. I'm not sure if its the battery power (amp/h) or if its the fact that the previous owner replaced the hard drive from 40GB to 100GB, which is not original, and might consume more energy then the battery can supply. I would like to have a test prucedure to distinguish between the two i.e.:
1. is it the battery iteself (when I connect the powe cord the laptop works fine)
2. is the disk consuming too much energy since its not original sony.

Help anyone?

 

Sounds like your new battery is defective to me. There's no way your 100GB drive is consuming that much power - in fact, it probably uses less than the oiginal drive. Laptop drives have grown more efficient, not less.

 

You can use the battery info page of RMClock to see data such as design capacity, fully charged capacity and remaining capacity, as well as the charge / discharge rate. What are these values?

Another possibility is that the computer is detecting that it is not a Sony battery and therefore blocking its use. Sony do this with some notebooks. Look for the program ISBMgr.exe and uninstall it. See this thread.

John

 

thanks - I will check it, the battery indicator is still flashing after 36 hours of charge. its probably defective, but there's another clue - the old battery is not flashing any more (*seam to be really dead and this is original sony, when I bought it - it was flashing when charging)...

 

Thanks John,
OK - checked the ISBMgr - there is none on this laptop OS, so this alternative is not relevant. since the battery indictor blinks after 36 hours of charging I think its either not charging but trying to, or bad battery from the begining. the specs seam to be fine, but I'm not sure I can test it...
the link to the ebay bid is:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...K:MEWAX:IT&item=260219120333#ebayphotohosting
maybe its not relaiable...

 

Did you try the battery info page of RMClock? It should have sub-page which gives the details for your battery.

John

 

Hi John, Thanks - I was testing this on my other laptop (thinkpad) and seam to work wonderful (i.e. recognizing the type and capacity) - this will help me on generating a comparison tests between the old original sony and the new one... I belive I know what the results will be but thanks anyway for a long term tip...great to know these tools.

 

well John - on the vaio the rmclock didn't work - maybe its because the Crusoe cpu, or maybe from other reasons. Might be something in the OS, but I've tried safe mode as well. it saying something about 32 bits application. on normal mode is just generating an error message and wouldn't continue. any walk arround for Crusoe or C1-MWP series? Thanks again...

 

Ah! I won't try to troubleshoot that. It might be the Crusoe.

How about Mobilemeter? It also has a battery info page (maybe right click on the graph window and get to the options).

John

 

Well John - good suggestion to use the meter - and quite interesting results. I can't explain any of them - 4% wear on old battery, but still - the laptop shuts down and battery indicator blinks endlessly. the new battery seam to have 14% wear, and don't work as well. any ideas? thanks a lot,

 

The reported battery wear is the difference between the designed capacity and the fully charged capacity. Were those batteries charged when you tested them? The remaining wattage in the new battery is 10mWh, which is somewhat empty, while the old battery has about 12% remaining. It looks as if the new battery is not charging. I wonder whether there is something similar to ISBMgr but it has another name.

Also, is there any battery calibration option in the BIOS?

John

 

and one other thing - the graph shows that there is no charge on both batteries - it seams not to send any current to the battery. can this be an indication that the laptop recharging system is faulty? or somewhere in the bios there is something preventing the laptop from charging the battery? thanks.

 

Hi John - well, if you are asking if I checked it while the charger was connected - Yes. when I disconnect the charger the laptop shuts down. the charging current is ZERO on the graph. I will try to examine the startup and send attach an image - maybe you can recognize another background ISBmgr. I didn't see any battery callibration on the bios (if you talk about the initial setup of the laptop). the behavior of the laptop, including another battery I've tested is as if it doesn't charge the battery. I've got one almost fully charged and it worked for an hour without recharging, and then wouldn't recharge. I've returned it and got the new replacement which I marked as "new china". both of the replacements came from the same supplier. if there was an ISBmgr problem wouldn't the sony react normally? (original).
Thanks

 

[- maybe you can recognize another background ISBmgr. Thanks[/QUOTE]
Hi John - on the image
this is the startup using msconfig. there is a single hkey service which is used for function (fn) keyboard. i've installed it, I don't remember if it was prior to the battery malfunction, but the original sony held 5 minutes before I installed it. I will try to shut it down. Still checking on battery callibration you've mentioned. thanks

 

and another clue - I ran the ISBMgr.exe taken from another vaio - and it is saying that I should replace the battery to SONY (which was the one I inserted) or else it will go into hibrenation.... might mean that the laptop is not charging or recognizing the battery. I don't have a clue if this is a hardware problem, but I'm only guessing that its before OS rise.