Resolved laptop shuts down after extended absense

My nephew left his Lenovo laptop off and unplugged from the wall (the battery was left in the machine) for 3 months while he was away in the military and now is about to return to school. He plugged it into the wall, turned it on yesterday and received a message that indicated that VISTA needed to be activated. He shut it down and restarted it but now it won't run for any more than a few minutes before shutting down on its own.

He removed the battery and tried it from the wall but the same thing happens. Does it need to be reset or some other such action after the extended rest?

The machine is 2 years old "“ Pentium Dual Core 1.6GHz "“ 1GB Ram "“ Vista Home Premium

Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks

 

Maybe similar. My niece said her laptop was broken. When I started it up, I suspected the battery was completely flat. It would only flash some of the LEDs. I left it to charge for 24 hours. When I tried starting there errors, shutdowns, blank screens, etc. I left it to charge for another 24 hours, then went into the BIOS/Startup Configuration. I checked things like the Boot Order, the HDD listing, but the only thing I changed was to disable Quick Boot/Quick Start (they have different terms ).

The system now runs normally, EXCEPT that it has reverted to a date of 2000 which probably means the CMOS battery (like the battery in a desktop computer) has been discharged.

I haven't tried resetting the date and restarting to see if the CMOS battery has been recharged, but this system is too old to buy a new battery if it special. Older laptops used a standard button battery for the CMOS, it seems now they use specialised ones, which may be costly.

So...
Charge it for two or three days.

Check or look around in the BIOS settings, but select "Save and Exit" when you are finished (usually F10).

If you get to Windows, look at the time and date (you should be able to see it in the BIOS). If you reset the time and date, check that it holds after cold starts (not restarts).

Matt