My mate sold me his Sony Vaio laptop yesterday, as he was never using it. All worked fine when I got it home, until I decided to shut it down and switch it on with just battery power alone (Had been using the AC from the moment I got it home). Anyway the laptop did not respond to me pressing and even holding down the power button, and now I am confused. The laptop will work fine if I 'kick start' it by plugging in the AC and then pulling it out and pressing the power button at the same time. It will also sometimes manage to power up if I take out the battery then push it back in and quickly press the power button (This method is quite fiddly and random). Once the laptop is running it is great and the battery will last easily 2 hours. It just seems to be the power button that dosen't want to respond. For the record, I have tried fully charging the battery overnight and even reseating the 256MB RAM module (In both of the slots). None of this seems to have made a difference. I have also tried system recovery just to make sure the issue was not XP related but that was to no avail. Suggestions? :)

I hate to do this, becasue I know this isnt an answer, its an observation. I have worked on a few sony vaios now an di have found them all to be problematic and generally good looking but crappily-built. I;'d dump it. faster, better, MORE!!