Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Sony Vaio VGN-FS740/W Battery Problem

The battery on my wife's computer would no longer hold a charge and it was time to replace it. We replaced it with a generic brand battery (little more then $100). It charged fine, but then while it was running a message would suddenly pop up, saying that the battery was not inserted correctly and that it had to switch to hibernate mode. The battery light would flash rapidly after this, and it would never come back long or it would go hibernate again. Re-seating the battery had no effect. It turns out that Sony truly has turned evil. They are running a little service that checks whether the battery is a Sony battery ($300!), and if it is not then it kicks into action and sends your machine into hibernation!

After some digging I found this article, and the fix is easy, the service is called ISBMgr and to get rid of it permanently fire up msconfig like so


go to the startup tab and uncheck the ISBMgr.



Now when you restart it will ask you if you knew that some services where changed, just say yes and it will never bother you again.

Bad Sony. No more Sony for me..

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are a legend :)

This problem was making me pull out my hair .... good all msconfig. answer was right infront of me.

Anonymous said...

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Bravo! My light still blinks like mad, but it doesn't auto-hibernate anymore... real kicker is it's the original (SONY) battery!

Thanks very much!

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for this wizard advice, I had almost given up and after updating drivers and firmware and bios it still didnt work, until I discovered your wonderful blog brilliant! My Sony Vaio VGN-TX1HP has a new life! Bob Paris France

Brent said...

Thank you!!! I spent 3 hours trying to fix this after doing a fresh install of windows 7 & vaio drivers. Still not getting all my function keys working but at least this is fixed! Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

This problem still exists for me....The message went away but the battery is connected but not charging
Still trying to find a solution...

Time said...

Thanx Bro

I finally find your wonderful blog before I got stuck in finding update the latest firmare from Sony that never existed.....

TERIMA KASIH BANYAK !!

Unknown said...

rock on homeslice. i was about to throw this sucker from a 4 story building... into my garden, of course.

Anonymous said...

Thankyou so much mate, makes my day ;)!!

Anonymous said...

you are genius. Thanks

Anonymous said...

You are the best!!!