My laptops about 18 months old and has started crashing on battery power after about 5 mins, (no warning, it just shuts down), and is as dead as a Dodo unless I remove and replace the battery which will allow it to boot up again and show almost full battery power until crashes again after another perhaps 5 mins. I doubt it’s the battery as how come it will reboot after removing and replacing it and show almost fully charged.

Anybody any ideas please ??

Spliffter

Get it back to the shop and demand they look at it is what I would do. What model is it? It might be an easy fix and save you having to delete all incriminating evidence from your HD

What model and brand? What operating system?

how is it with the powersupply plugged in

It would seem your rechargeable battery is 'used' up.

It's easy to 'upgrade'. Many are simply AA batteries inside sometimes with a small circuit.

If it comes to the worst, crack it open carefully and you'll see. Just replace the batteries (may need soldering -
be careful with heat and batteries)

I've done it about a dozen times with various tools and laptops.

check your charging circuit works first.

It's a crap e-systems, (it was cheap), with Windows Vista Home Premium.

It's ideal on mains power Groove and can't see how it can be the battery Quickly otherwise how come it's OK when I remove and replace it? (or is that how a battery goes).

Could it be because it is left plugged in most of the time and never hardly turned off? I've heard that batteries sometimes need fully discharging, will shorting out the + & - terminal do that ?

Cheers guys

If you have mostly used it plugged in and not let the battery fully discharge its capacity will have been severely reduced - lithium batteries have a chemical 'memory' so to speak of their initial few charges and if they are not fully discharged they never are able to take a full charge again.

After a year and a halfs use of a cheapo battery i would suspect it is now finished - dont connect + and - together - lithium fires are not nice.

Have a search online and buy a replacement battery (probably around the 30 quid mark) - i wouldnt suggest messing about with cutting the battery case open and soldering bits unless you actually know what you are doing.


Martin - not sure if the batteries are covered past the 1 year warranty - pretty sure in the small print no matter what the guarantee u take out that the battery is NOT included.

Don't short the terminals: you need a discharge circuit to do this. It will go BANG otherwise.

I can't be arsed with the long explanantion of rechargeable batteries sorry.
Basically depending on the type of rechargeable battery (Li-ion, Ni-Cad, Ni-MH, etc) determines how to
charge it, how to store it and so on.

I do not use a battery in my laptop because each time I use my laptop an effort is made to see if the battery needs recharging.
On some systems this counts towards the lifecycle of the battery. Rechargeable batteries may be charged up to 1000 times, although
some types do get more.

This is why I check that the charging system is working - then make a multimeter check on the state of the battery health.
When factories made your battery it is likely it used AA cells that wer about 1100-1300mAh - AA cells now do nearly 3000 mAh.

I see the difference when I change mine over.

count yourself lucky m8 mine went after 7/8 months!!!

phoned acer they said the laptop and battery charger is under warranty for 1 year the battery for only 6 months the fuckers!!!

but they have been good with the 10 other times i have sent the shit thing back!!!

might even be getting a new laptop off them this time.