So I've had this laptop for over a year now and it has run well. I recently purchased a new high-capacity battery for it which worked fine for a couple of months, but now Vista refuses to charge the battery and says "plugged in, not charging." I got to the HP website and they say to remove the battery driver and scan for hardware changes. I do that, but then the battery is detected as an "unknown device" and won't install and it won't let me force the "microsoft ACPI battery" driver onto it like with old windows versions. Now without the driver, the battery charges sometimes, but sometimes not, and I obviously have no way of telling battery life and percent remaining. I don't believe the battery is at fault because it still has good life and the old battery makes no difference. What can I do to jumpstart the driver?

Have you read the owner manual regarding battery replacement? Any battery you use other than the one specified for it can damage the laptop. i_Xp/VistaUser

It is a compatible HP battery for my laptop. Again, the old battery makes no difference when I put it back in.

List the "compatible" battery. Of course when you put back the old battery it will make no difference because your laptop is already damaged. The damage didn't happen immediately - it took time for it to set in. The bottom line here is ... always use batteries approved by the laptop manufacturer. i_Xp/VistaUser

no it is not a genuine 130 dollar HP battery. Yes, it came from E-bay. I had the model number and it matched what was compatible with this laptop. No the model number is not printed on the battery and I can't retrieve it. Yes, it has the same mAH rating. I've done this before with an old dell and it worked fine. Right now the battery is charging but I can't determine its life. Funny thing is that now the driver's uninstalled it charges. So you say any non-genuine HP battery is damaging to a laptop. Do you also go to the car dealership to buy all your car parts? I don't mean disrespect but that won't do me any good now if what you say is true. I was thinking there were other possibilities here. Thank you.