The HP nc6000 notebook has the capacity for two batteries -- a 'primary' battery and a 'Multiday' battery (that slides into the same slot used for a DVD/CD drive.) When on battery power the notebook utilizes the primary battery first until it drains out, then it is supposed to switch over to the Multiday battery. When the primary battery drained down to zero, all power cut off to the notebook and it immediately shut down.

You have to tell it to utilize the other battery; I'd guess it's the power and battery options in control panel. I don't have a notebook with a similar configuration, so I can't really give an exact answer. Another suggestion would be to see if HP has any special software for the setup you might need.

Are you certain that your secondary battery is fully operational? Do you have access to another notebook like yours that you can test it in? Also is the battery swapping feature hardware controlled, or does it require driver installation and/or additional configuration? Perhaps you could try to reinstall the drivers for the battery interface, if it requires them at all. Also that particular battery swapping feature is probably an HP technology, and issues with it would be most accurately addressed by contacting the manufacturer.

I've got the nc8000, with the exact same setup (primary + multiday batteries), but mine works as intended. My first thought is that the battery might be defective. Are you still in the warranty period? Maybe give some thought to hitting up HP for an exchange, which should solve the problem. In case you were wondering, there are no settings or anything that may be causing this problem. The laptop knows that there are two batteries there, but for some reason the second battery obviously is not discharging properly.

This is where you discover why I don't like notebook computers. Basically, they are over-priced, under-performing, under-engineered and absolutely awful! So, over-priced, well I'm selling 3.5Ghz 64bit desktop systems with 1Gb RAM, 350Gb SATA2 hard disk and DVD writer, (16x dual layer) for around $400. You can't actually get that spec in a laptop, but if you could it would be in Bill Gates territory! To get more than 15 minutes out of the battery, notebook processors are throttled back, a lot! A mobile 3 GHz processor spends most of it's time running at about 2 GHz.

Under engineered, this has long been a failing. Notebooks are either incredibly heavy like Toshibas or incredibly fragile because the design is shaved to nearly nothing to save weight. Add to all the above, the fact that there is absolutely no standardization in notebook design, and you get a piece of kit that's not only expensive to buy, slow and fragile, but also terribly expensive to repair.

A combo drive like yours for a desktop is about $15, for your notebook, I hate to think, and while it's easy to work on a desktop system, many companies charge a minimum fee of $200 just to look at a notebook.

Right down to brass tacks! I assume your Vaio is running XP? If so, it wouldn't be a drive problem, especially if the drive has not been seen by the system bios. That also discounts any possibility of the cardbus adaptor clashing and causing this problem, however, depending on what you had to physically do to fit the adaptor, it could I suppose have caused a mechanical problem with the drive or it's interface. I feel it is most unlikely that this is any kind of software problem.

It is in fact most likely a failure of some component in the interface that attaches the drive to the machine. That could possibly be in the drive, but there is an equal chance that it could be part of the dock in the system. If the latter, it will probably be uneconomical to repair in normal circumstances, since the machine is 3 years old. In fact, even if it is the drive, it will be touch and go as to whether it is worth the cost of a new drive, assuming of course that Sony are still producing that model of drive.