Screen says "Unable to listen to music; low battery" & won't charge?

Question

My niece just called me with a problem I could not find a solution to doing a search.
She said she was listening to a song when her Nano stopped playing. When she looked at the screen, it said "You Can't play music, your battery is dead". It appeared for about a minute, then disappeared.
She plugged it in via the A/C wall adaptor, but the charging icon is not showing on the screen.
I told her to attempt a restart, but nothing happened. I asked if she attempted to charge it using the computer. That had also been tried before contacting me, and no icons appeared then either. Initially, my thinking was that it would need to be connected to the charger for a while before it had enough energy to show anything, but she said that it's been connected to the wall charger for over 3 hours now and that's why she decided to call me. Unfortunatley, we live a few thousand miles apart, so I can't run over and see it. And yes - I did have her check the hold button & that's not on either (see; I read these boards & do searches when I have questions! LOL)
Any ideas are greatly appreciated, as I'm at a complete loss. I have never heard of an iPod, Nano or regular, displaying such an interested message (I asked over 3 different times, and each time she repeated the same thing - unable/can't listen to music, low battery - then died).
Hopefully, someone can answer so I can regain my iPod Goddess status in her eyes =) I was floored when I did a discussion search and couldn't find the answer!
THX!
  Windows XP   First Time Mommy to 4gen 60gb

Answer 1

Hi Menhem,
It is unfortunate that the automatic calibration didn't complete.  I would recommend going ahead and trying the Manual Calibration steps at the end of the document Testing and Calibrating the Battery (Windows 7), then go back to using the notebook as you normally would and see if the behaviour of the battery and charging system changes at all, you could also run the battery test again to see if you get a different result.  If it improves great, but if there are still problems, try the automatic calibration one more time to see if it will complete.
Another thing to do is to make sure you are up to date with your BIOS, the latest BIOS for your model is F.52, which you can find at the link below, but it is relatively old at this point, so I would thing that you probably already have it on your PC.  In general I would recommend running the HP Support Assistant application, and letting it check your PC and keep it up to date with all the necessary drivers.
How long have you had the notebook?  Batteries do degrade over time with normal usage, and if you have had the notebook for awhile, and have put the battery through many charging cycles, it may just be time for a new battery.  Check out Purchasing a Replacement Battery for instructions on finding a replacement battery.  Some other documents to review are Improving Battery Performance (Windows 8, 7, Vista) and Understanding Lithium-Ion and Smart Battery Technology, both of which may have some good information to help you with your issue.
R
Although I am an HP Employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.