Computers. Ugh. Problems. Ugh. I was on my laptop this morning, literally using it on my lap … I moved it over to reposition my legs, and vrrroooop. The whole this shut down instantly, like it’s magical powers had suddenly vanished into thin air. Nothing would make it come back on. The battery was fully charged and it was also plugged in with the power cord.

I learned much this morning and afternoon.

I found out where my CMOS was finally. I’d wanted to know that before. The thing that I’ll write here are the basic symptoms, to help some poor soul in a similar crisis.

I learned that if I took the battery out, and re-plugged the power cord in, the caps lock line of lights above the power button would flash for a brief second when the plug met the receptacle on the back of the laptop. Then, pressing the power button on the laptop would elicit the hard drive and battery lights to light up momentarily, as if they’d be doing more … but then they’d go out. No other things would happen.

I’m somewhat familiar with the insides of my Sony Vaio laptop, since the COKE SPILL INCIDENT of last month. So, I took stuff apart and poked around, went down to Frank’s computer and search online, go back upstairs and poke, plug, poke, feel like slapping it … then back down to surf again … on and on we went.

I finally found a thread online about COMPAQ laptops of a certain model that had something similar in common, with each other, and my situation. I didn’t hear an difinitive answers though.

I was research then how to get my laptop hard drive slaved to the PC, to save the data that wasn’t yet saved. Most was, but not all was externally saved. I found one online place with possible $13,+ change little kit to hook one up and even mount it to the PC, cool. Anyhow, that’s a future solution perhaps.

I read and read and read, and finally realized that the CMOS battery may look quite different than what I was looking for. I finally found it, blue shrinkwrapped plastic two segment thing with a two-prong jumper cable coming out of it. It has battery info written on it, but it was upsidedown and very hard to read due to location.

The thing I read that enlightened me enough to try this, said to put the battery in the freezer for about 10 minutes, then re-install it and the dead computer with revive.

My Vaio PCG-GRV550 has been through so much the past month, what the hey, why not just pry that battery off of it’s sticky perch on my motherboard. And pry I had to, really tug and pull. Off it came. I precautionarily put it in a plastic freezer bag to keep it dry. I set the stove timer for 10 minutes. I twiddled my fingers waiting, looked at the timer, it said 8. Time flies when you are having fun. The opposite is also true.

So, I took myself down to the PC to surf for more info meanwhile. Wouldn’t you know it, time flew. Beep, Beep, Beep, … I was called back upstairs in such a short time.

I turned of the timer beeping, and went to the freezer, removed the battery from there and the bag, and plopped it back into the Vaio GRV550, snapping the jumper in first, then re-seating the sticky bottom of the CMOS battery. I plugged the power cord in to the computer, and no lights flashed. Good.

Then I pushed the power button, and voila! BIOS was reset to 1987 and everything was working great!

I had to reset the time.

Now, I suppose the search for a new CMOS battery will begin. As long as I don’t power OFF, BIOS will hold. That is, unless it decides to go bye bye in the middle of stuff again, which the freezer trick will work to cure again, and again, perhaps.

This sad tale is not as sad as it has to be. A solution was found in less than half a day. I saw later a site that advertised truly fixing computers, repairing motherboards, etc. not just “replacing things”.

They had a banner below some of their info that read something like:

“Has you Sony Vaio Laptop stopped working is dead? Send it to us and for $90 we’ll revive it.”

Hmmm. sounds a bit familiar … is this a Sony Vaio laptop problem? CMOS Battery goes bad? Sony was no help on their site. It was torture trying to load any helps on sony’s site. So, now I just need a local source for a new CMOS battery. IT friends are helpful when it comes to parts, and so I sure hope to have this all solved completely soon.

I thought perhaps I had this problem due to the Coke Incident, but maybe not, or partially not. Hmm.