It has been three years since I have bought my Sony Vaio, Long back my battery has gone and I wasn't getting much of battery life (approx 10 mins). So mostly it was always plugged in when working, but because of the battery it was getting heated up too much, and it was never on Lap Top!!
Recently it crashed because of a RAM issue, and I took it to my friend if he could open it up and remove a RAM and check with other RAM, I did not had the right equipment to open it up. I am going to order one from EBAY and hope I would be able to do it next time. It was finally up when the faulty RAM was removed. Now that he also had cleaned the cooling fans the only thing that was causing heating was my old battery. He suggested to order a battery on Ebay from Hong-Kong which you would get at 1/5th of the price you pay when you buy it from Sony. An order was placed. It arrived in about 2-3 weeks time.
Only when I opened up the pack, there was a small CD saying that you may have to update the BIOS to use this intelligent battery. I am not sure how a battery can be intelligent, so I just plugged in the new battery and it wasn't booting the laptop. When I checked it with my friend I came to know that the SONY BIOS reads the serial number of battery from its EEPROM and hence it would not allow non-oem battery to work with a VAIO. Now I understood why they have asked to patch bios for working with INTELLIGENT battery.
But since I had windows 7, 64 bit OS, the software tool they have provided to update bios did not work because of USER access permission error as below.
Phoenix Secure WinFlash "Cannot load driver C:\....phlashnt.sys. This driver has been blocked from loading. Error code:1275.”
Now I had to fall back to windows xp to run this tool to update bios and then install windows 7 back. Now that flash is updated the battery is working fine, and I am getting about 2+ hours of backup. I am happy finally. I just updated this in blog, so that for anyone who bought non-oem battery on ebay, don't assume that your battery is FAKE, but it is intelligent, and you need to patch your bios. Keep in mind that any failure while updating bios would brick your laptop, and it would be rendered useless. Make sure you back up bios before updating and you know the right procedure and tools.
For any help, do leave a comment, I would try to help out.
how to patcing sony bios without original battery?. i just buy non original (third party) battery for my vaio cr220e, it should update bios with original battery installed, but my original battery was broken.
ReplyDeleteYes, u do not need original battery, put original battery and boot the laptop, once booted into windows, remove the battery, Run the bios update software, it should give a warning saying battery not inserted. Now close the program and insert the non-oem battery.
ReplyDeleteNow try the same old procedure mentioned in the booklet of your battery to update bios, it should work without any issue.
BTW you need windows xp to do bios update, with Windows 7 you wont be able to do it because of User Access Control (UAC)
Good post. I was upgrading a friend's computer battery on a VGN-CR420E. I tried running the update using Win 7 x64 and got the 1275 error as you mentioned. I used a BartPE build and got an unsupported model error. I assume it was because of the build I was using. I then installed a hard drive running win 7 starter 32-bit from another laptop. It ran and installed the update fine. After swapping the drive back and booting, it's charging and using the battery fine. Therefore, you can use Windows 7, just not the 64-bit versions.
ReplyDelete@Mike, Thanks for sharing the info. I have not tried on Windows 7, 32 bit as I did not had a copy of it, but I am sure it would be helpful to someone.
ReplyDeleteI have had a bit of luck on this issue. The first problem was the software - it doesn't work on Windows 7 64 bit. So, I had to first install Vista. I had to copy the cd files to the harddrive to get them to work. I then ran the sonybiospatch software which created 4 other files.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the battery had drained to 0% and I got the error "you must have a fully charged battery." BUT, I noticed the "config" file that was created. In it is a line: "CapacityPercent" it was set to 20. I changed it to -10.
Apparently, the software uses this line to compare the capacity percentages, because after setting it, my 0% battery seemed just fine. The update proceeded, I am now charging the battery. It appears to work as intended.
I also have a Vaio VGN-CR420E. I have tried with four different batteries. Two were original, old Sony batteries that came with this model, one was a new "decoded" aftermarket battery, and the 4th is a new Sony battery with the Sony logo on it. In all four cases, I have not succeeded in reliable battery charging and functioning. Problems include not being able to boot from battery only, rapid flashing battery indicator LED, and inconsistent or nonexistent charging. I have tried two different motherboards (yes!), three different BIOS's (including one for aftermarket batteries), and two different power boards, and NOTHING has solved the problem. The only thing that helps is disconnecting the CMOS battery for a while. But even when that works, all you have to do is connect or disconnect the power cord while the unit is on for one or all of the problems to re-occur. And sometimes, you don't even have to do that. This is the most stubborn computer problem I have ever encountered! Does anyone know if the AC adapter plays any role in the battery charging and functioning circuit of these Sony machines? I am running the original Vista operating system, but the problems were evident even before I installed a hard drive and ran Sony's recovery discs. Does anyone have any clues as to the cause of this?
ReplyDelete