Laptop will not start with AC and battery?

[vinnieza]

I turned my laptop on today with the AC power cable plugged in and the battery inserted. Under power management Vista said that the laptop was plugged in but the battery was not charging. The power was at 8%.

So i shut down my laptop, unplugged the AC power, took out the battery and reinserted it, i then plugged the power cable back in. The battery icon started to flash continuously quite rapidly. I could also not start up my laptop- when i press the power button the green power button comes on but then goes off again immediately and the laptop remains how it was).

However, if i take out the battery i can start up my laptop fine.

Any ideas what could be causing this? I am thinking the battery is dead (although i have had the laptop less than a year and a couple of months). This does not explain why it will not turn on when the battery is inserted however?

The laptop i have is a VGN-FZ11L running Vista Home Premium. I also have Ubuntu on another partition if that makes any difference.

Cheers

Edit: £130 for a battery!!! It better have a 2 year warranty (think it's only a year as was looking into getting an extended one. Thought nah it's Sony it won't break ).

[117]

Sounds like a dodgy battery

[vinnieza]

I think you're right. Why it couldn't have failed 2 months ago then i could have got a replacement under guaranty. I looked and no in the UK the warranty is a year. Should have bought it from Turkey (where it is 2 years?!?!). Funny thing was i nearly bought an extended warranty for it but then decided not to when i saw it was £75 and thought nothing will go wrong. Ha.

[117]

note to future Vincent: don't buy a Vaio again.

[vinnieza]

Too right. Should know better than to fall for branding