[Natechie]

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-CR123E laptop. Last October I upgraded my laptop to 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD @ 7200RPM, and did a clean install of Win7 64-bit.

The new upgrade replaced my old 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD @ 5400RPM, and Windows Vista 32-bit.

Anyway, prior to the upgrade, my original battery was wearing out and would only hold charge for about 20-30 minutes if I was lucky. After the upgrade, my battery life took a steady decline to where it would only hold a charge for 5-10 minutes.

When it finally would not hold a charge at all, I naturally took into consideration the prior behavior of the battery and figured that the battery was dead.

I purchased a new battery, but now it will NOT charge as well. Do you think I have a faulty power adapter? Note that the laptop powers up when plugged into the power cord, but it just will not charge a battery.

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Have you tried charging the battery whilst the laptop is not powered on, also try cleaning the power contacts where the battery fits into the laptop.
Another option is to open up your Device Manager (usually a right click on your Computer/My Computer) and remove all battery related devices from the Device Manager. Then after you’ve done that, right click again and select “Scan for Changes”, which should reinstall the proper services and allow for your laptop to charge again.
Below is a video for you to watch, it is not brilliant quality but what is being demonstrated is straight forward;

[phillpower2]

Have you tried charging the battery whilst the laptop is not powered on, also try cleaning the power contacts where the battery fits into the laptop.
Another option is to open up your Device Manager (usually a right click on your Computer/My Computer) and remove all battery related devices from the Device Manager. Then after you’ve done that, right click again and select “Scan for Changes”, which should reinstall the proper services and allow for your laptop to charge again.
Below is a video for you to watch, it is not brilliant quality but what is being demonstrated is straight forward;

[Digerati]

You could have got a bad battery. I don't think it is the power supply because the notebook works when plugged in. So that leaves the charging circuits in the notebook. I note that doubling the RAM and adding a faster spinning drive increases the demand for power, and cooling. The faster drive adds less than 1 watt, so that would not be significant. RAM however, uses 10 - 15 watts per gigabyte, so you placed an additional 20 to 30 watts demand on the system. For most PCs, that would not be a problem, but for notebooks, it could be. Unfortunately, outside of trying another battery, there's not much you can do about it. You might pull your extra RAM and see if fixes the problem.