I recently had a problem with my Presario R3000 laptop. The battery was completely drained and would not charge. The laptop is still under warranty, so I figured I would contact support and see what my options were. Before doing that thought I checked the Compaq/HP support website to see if there were any updates for my laptop. There was a firmware update that was supposed to fix a problem where if the battery is completely drained, the laptop won't charge it. Hey, that sounds like my problem! So, I flashed my laptop's firmware with the new release. Everything went well, but it didn't seem to help my battery problem. So, I decided to contact HP. I went back to their website and noticed they have an option to do a live chat online with tech support. So, I clicked the link and I was greeted by a tech almost immediately. That was a surprise! He got my details and gave me a procedure to try to "recalibrate" the battery. I was pretty sure this wouldn't work, but I figured I should at least try it. I did the procedure and as I thought, it didn't help. So, the next day I got back on the tech support website and started a new chat. The tech got online right away and I explained my problem and told him what I had done the previous day. He said it sounds like my battery really is dead and that since it is under warranty, they would send me a new one at no charge. HP shipped it FedEx overnight, with a return label for my old battery. I put the new battery in and everything is working great!
Anyway, just thought I'd share this, since most of the time all I read are horror stories about tech support! Thanks HP!