Warning about Sony Vaio VGN-AR Batteries On Ebay + BIOS

[Joe]

There are sellers on Ebay offering aftermarket batteries for the Sony Vaio VGN-AR series.

These batteries come with a BIOS update file that is supposed to allow the system to work with thier new "aftermarket" battery.


PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE BIOS THEY SUPPLY YOU WITH TO UPDATE YOUR SYSTEM WILL KILL YOUR LAPTOP.

The file that the sellers on Ebay are supplying are INCOMPLETE or Corrupt. I've been contacted by several customers that purchased these aftermarket batteries that attempted to do the BIOS update and failed.

There is no known way to get a good "BIOS Dump" for the newer Vaio models, and since there is NO available BIOS download from the Sony site for these models, I can only assume they attempted to Dump a BIOS (in order to modify it for their battery) and never got the full and complete BIOS.

The models are VGN-AR series.

[pete33812]

Joe,

My daughter purchased a aftermarket battery for her Sony VGN-NR180E and has run into this issue. It will not boot nor recognize the recovery CD. Any suggestion on how/if it can be repaired? It worked fine until she purchased this battery (going off to college and wanted a battery that lasted).

Please PM.

Thank You
Pete


Edit - Removed the OP's e-mail address. KW

[ian8115]

Does anyone have a working bios that has been amended for the Sony AR series to work with the aftermarket batteries?

There must be some clever boffin who has corrected the right code? I can upload the original

Thanks

[edwin]

The aftermarket batteries need to have proper firmware in the battery itself. This is not a bios problem but a battery manufacturer problem created by Sony that does not want to release the code and thus can sell their own replacement batteries at a premium.

[ian8115]

But the Modified bios works fine with the FZ/NR aftermarket batteries as I have applied such bios updates from the included CD before. I assume they change code for the computer not to check the battery,

I was asking if someone had a working AR bios to not check the battery. Apparently it is thought a bad bios dump was amended initially by the chinese.

Hope you understand what I mean and if they chinese amended a working bios at a later date rather than the corrupted one that is bricking the AR models.

[edwin]

The battery check is not just for the Sony code, it also has some checks for the condition of the battery, remaining load cycles, temperature etc. If you want to risk your laptop with a Chinese cheap clone, ok, I'll try and find a dumbed-down bios-dump for the AR series.

[ian8115]

Yes I realise that. Basically instead of putting the original bios back on I wanted to know whether there was a working bios that allows the aftermarket battery to work rather than the current one with bad checksum or incomplete EEPROM dump. As like I say the amended bios for NR, FZ series I have seen working so whoever amended it originally knew which parts to amend.

If there was some out there I would try whilst I had the chip off for programming. Saves wasting a perfectly good battery.

Cheers.

[bobchap]

Yes I fell victim to this as well, my Sony laptop is now a brick
it looks for the CD then stops, is there anything that can be done?
I do not have nor can I find an original BIOS VGN AR690U

Please help; Thank you, Bob Chappell

[amavisca]

Hi, i had the same problem. anyone can help? anyone have a solution? i can´t boot my vaio.

Thanks for any help.