Dead Laptop Battery

Nick-H

I left my laptop here in Chennai for 4 months during which time it was not used at all. It now has a flat battery that is not taking any charge at all

• In the previous six months here I let the battery run down and be recharged every few days
• Current symptom is that, on being plugged in, the Charge lamp will light, remain on for a few minutes and then go out.
• I've tried (and will continue to try) unplugging and replugging it each time the light goes out, in the hope that it will get the point and start absorbing electricity: this has worked in the past with a couple of camcorder batteries that falsely claimed, when new, to have a full charge.
• It is a Li-Ion battery.
• It is connected to mains power via an APC Back-UPS ES500 UPS/surge protector/voltage regulator.
• It really is empty: before I plugged it into the UPS a power cut caused instant death.

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GoanCanuck

Your battery looks to be toast. You will have to buy a new one.

john.sw

Presumably the charger also powers the computer, so it cannot be a faulty charger?

If that's the case, it looks like the battery is knackered.

Have you checked the contacts and made sure they're clean?

Also, you could warm the battery by leaving it is a warm place for a couple of hours before trying to charge it.

If that fails, you'll have to buy a new battery... not the cheapest things in the world!

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Nick-H

I'll check, but the machine is less than a year old (but second hand and originally bought in USA so I don't have much hopes of the warranty) and the battery has hardly ever been removed.Warm place? Does Chennai qualify? Even though it is winter it is still 26 in my room...Hmmm.... Bugger.
This machine was a stupid buy in the first place!

sudheer poppa

Which brand of laptop, the laptop model number and battery model number ?

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crvlvr

your battery is toast. had a similar experience with my electric toothbrush. worked fine one day, and then refused to charge the next.

Wanderer22

Hi Nick, Li-ion does not like being warm. Best long term storage is with 40% charge in cool conditions. See the following link for more battery info.
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-21.htm

Li-ion has a high power density, but not so good a life span. Chennai temperatures are probably not the best for these things.

W22

Nick-H

Oh dear ---I just brought my rechargable toothbrush here too . India has already cost me one toothbrush, which seized up, but that was quite old and had been left here in a suitcase for some months.

It is a Compaq Presario R3306US. The battery is covered in different numbers, maybe Series Model HSTNN-DB02 identifies it. I'd better google for that and start checking prices . OTOH, I only use the battery to get through power cuts!

mira4bai4

Nick if you do replace the battery, personally I would replace the laptop with an iBook, but back to batteries; laptops are designed to run on batteries, that is the whole point of them, portable and usable while portable, trouble is most of us don't use them the way that they are designed and futtt goes the battery. They are designed to be used between base and base and so constantly being drained, then charged.

So when you get your battery ~ condition it ~ fully charge it, then run it flat with normal use; repeat this 3 times. If you have an icon that gives the battery level on the Menu Bar pay attention to that and use the laptop until it gets down to 5% storage, then charge it again until full and disconnect the power. Essentially only plug them in to the mains for charging when it gets down to 5%, this process will give a battery usually a minimum of about 2 years life and maybe up to 4 hours use before charging depending on how heavy the processing is.

Nick-H

Thanks, Mira: good advice indeed, and I hope it helps others ---but I've always let my battery run down regularly and recharged.

I so often used to tell this to our Japanese ex-pat staff who would take their astonishingly expensive laptops from powerpoint to powerpoint and then wonder, a year later, why the battery didn't work.

I'm not good on battery technology, but I do know that current-day batteries don't have the same memory problems, but do have a limit on the ultimate number of recharges.

I'm afraid I can't agree that my battery is toast! Much more like soggy bread

Anders

Older battery technologies did benefit from a full discharge every once in a while but Lithium-ion batteries should not be discharged fully if you can avoid it. The only reason to discharge them fully is to calibrate the "charge display" on the laptop.

Nick:
If you are only going to use the laptop around the house, why not just use the UPS instead of buying a new battery? Laptop batteries tend to be rather expensive

Nick-H

Yep, that is what I will do, at least for now. Of course, if I'd have known, I'd have bought a bigger UPS

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