First to cover: The Laptop doesn't have the original charger, it's a generic one manufactured by Logik The Laptop model is Sony VAIO VGN-NR38M The Laptop's battery is the original battery The Problem: In simple terms, I think the battery is broken, Vista reports 'No battery is detected', even with the battery plugged in as soon as I remove the charger the Laptop instantly shuts off, and because I can't even get Vista to detect the battery I can't run any sort of diagnostic tools to see if it's holding any charge at all. Is there a good way to test the battery externally? As I refuse to buy a new one until I'm sure it's the problem. I have already carefully dismantled the Laptop and checked the contact pins on the motherboard and they're fine, I've also checked the A/C charging port to motherboard connector and that's also fine. Thanks, Dave.
The VAIO battery manager will not even execute, it's just stops working and Vista displays an APPCRASH report. I've checked inside again and everything looks absolutely fine. Are there any decent battery diagnostics programs that you know of?
Why dont you try windows 7 or 8? Maybe it'll fix the problem, because Windows Vista has it's bugs i think, just my opinion.
Ok, I dismantled the battery and a microcontroller that handles the charge flow has burned out. Problem solved, thanks everyone for your time
check fuse, if its alive then there's quite high risk that your lappys mainboard circuitry is damaged too, fuses in laptop batts usually has 3pins and are under glue. Well, I just want to know if controller managed to burn that fuse, if it not then communications between circuitry->battery(batt info ports - which tells voltage left/manufacturer info and so on) or power converter can be damaged. they're not burning from nothing... something was wrong already. also to find source of the problem you can check cells, but it shouldn't be them... how to check if voltage converter is working - just check mobo batt connector with multimeter, usually for charge there are first few pins or 1st and last pins.