Laptop Battery Charging Problems

[tobeloy]

I have been offered a Toshiba Sat Pro laptop for �250 however it has a slight problem and I hope someone can advise me on what could solve the problem it has.

The laptop was subject to some water damage from a leak in the upstairs neighbours flat, it caused the laptop to not work and subsequently the neighbour had the mainboard replaced and the laptop works again, however the laptop only works with the adaptor and will not charge the battery yet it was fine before the leak would this sound like an expensive repair job? any help is appreciated.....cheers people

[smithy]

More investigation will be needed. I suspect the battery was iffy before the water problem - it's quite common, the laptop I'm using now only works on adapter but I can live with that. Can you get any charge into the battery at all? Does it die as soon as the adapter is removed. What usually happens when the battery is duff is that it appears fully charged then discharges very quickly. The best check would be try another battery.

Finally, the battery is made of a number of cells. Usually only one fails. You may get a duff battery from ebay cheaply, and make one good one from two bad ones. You will need competency with a multimeter and soldering iron though.

[tobeloy]

Thanks smithy,

The battery is showing 57% and will not charge any more also the laptop wont boot up on it when adaptor is removed, the battery light is constant orange, yet it puzzles me if it shows 57% why it wont work off the battery.

[fo3nix]

I'd recommend you don't buy it. It'll likely be more trouble than it's worth.