Pc

[maggiebee]

Some time ago I read some advice about getting your PC battery to work again. Seem to remember it involved powering down and removing battery. Doing something else? then rebooting. Please say I wasn't dreaming.

[Old_Geezer]

It probably also involved replacing the battery with a new one ?

[maggiebee]

No, OG - already bought a new battery and it isn't any better. Shows 3% (plugged in not charging). There is a way to sort it, honest!

[bhg481]

Can we assume it's a laptop you're talking about and the battery which powers it when not connected to the mains? Or is it the small battery which keeps the time/date settings etc?

[Shewy]

Test your power supply by taking out the battery and starting your laptop just on the power supply on it's own, if it does not fire up your power supply is faulty.
If it does, do not close down your laptop. insert your battery and check your battery icon on the bottom of the screen to see if it is charging or not, on Win 7 the icon will have a little plug on the battery if it is charging.

Some Laptop batteries have a little circuit board inside which controls the voltage going into the cells, this often malfunctions if the cells go too flat, putting in the battery when the laptop is running seems to kick it back into action.
You may have to start and restart a few times using the above instructions to bring it back to life, keep an eye on the battery icon, as soon as it says charging, important do not turn off the laptop let it fully charge whilst it is running.
If you still have problems give me a call and I will investigate further for you.
Shewy

[Old_Geezer]

If a new one doesn't fix it then surely it can't be the battery ? Maybe the connections to it ? Perhaps there was some CMOS settings to do also. Can't recall a time when I needed to worry about the battery.

[maggiebee]

Thanks shewy, will try that.

[Shewy]

I did not mention removing the battery to switch it off when it has hung up.
My comments were to reinsert the battery whilst the laptop is running, If this is a chinese or Japanese cloned battery (you can't always tell by looking at them) the laptop will not read the circuitry, hence not show as charging, plugging in the battery whilst the laptop is on allows it to charge, plus the laptop then (sometimes) reads the board inside the battery,,,, especially if it is a newer model of laptop, cameras have similar circuitry.

In 24 years as a computer engineer I can count on one hand the laptops that will not run on the power supply alone.

A lot of people only have 1 machine of the same model, so can't test the batteries that way, or have multimeters to test power supplies.
The method I gave should show where the fault lies, after that the member can come back and further instructions given about testing.
Hope this clarifies my last post.
Cheers Shewy

[Shewy]

How many people have unknowingly ruined nearly new laptops by buying what they think is manufacture batterys, chargers etc. when they are really good lookalike but dangerous copys

I have a lovely burned out pile in the corner of my my workshop that I could easily sell as very expensive and useless novelty doorstops
If it ends up the CMOS battery I'm going Bee squatting
Cheers Shewy