Ken
Does the error message contain the phrase:
Click ok to hibernate and reinstall the battery
?
And the OS is vista or win7?
If so, related urls are:
http://sarabannerman.blogspot.com/2007/04/sony-laptop-battery-mal-ware.html
Existing sony batteries may produce this message if the battery firmware, ac adapter or motherboard are bad. More commonly, third party replacement batteries (non sony) are detected by a sony marketing utility designed to detect non sony batteries. Sony batteries are 3 to 5 times the price of 3rd party batteries and are available (sometimes) at https://servicesales.sel.sony.com/ecom/accessories/web/index.jsp
Most of them are out of stock but can be ordered from the professional site (the site for those depot repair sites that pay thousands of dollars to Sony for their secret shop manuals)if you have a paid up account. (pretty rare as far as I can tell)
https://www.servicesplus.sel.sony.com/default.aspx
Sony batteries for laptops within the first two years are often the same price as a new notebook of another brand 300 to 400 dollars.
Third party Chinese batteries are available on Amazon, often using the picture and part numbers of the original Sony battery. These usually include a firmware hack file that needs to be run as a bios update. I have returned all those I have recieved in the past since the documentation changlish has some alarming and demented warnings in it.
Here is an excerpt:
3 , If you install the CD driver as instructed ,the laptop wonot boot itself after closing automaticlly ,it may not be compatiable your laptop .This ratio is very small .We feel pity that our battery can not be 100% compatiable with all modes at present because of so many laptop models.Please repair your laptop in the professional refreshing motherboard BIOS company to make your laptop work again. If you can not find the suitable repairing company,please concact your supplier ,we will try our best to restore it.Usually,it can be finished within one day as long as your hard driver is same state .
4, The CD driver program wonot destroy any laptop hardware device, but there will be the danger that may not succeed in installing ,please choose carefully before installing!!
5,If your computer damaged due to this driver,we will not undertake any responsibility!