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#1 2016-05-03 20:32:51

geo909
Member
Registered: 2008-09-07
Posts: 309

After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

Hi all,

I have a Dell Latitude E6330 laptop. I was not very careful recently, and I let the battery drain to 6% before I plugged it in.
Next time I checked the battery level it was 44%, but when I unplugged the laptop it died instantly. Indeed, this happens
every time I unplug it, and the battery is stuck to 44%, no matter how long the laptop has been plugged. Here is some more
info:

  • The battery led constantly blinks in orange. According to the manual, this means "Fatal battery failure with AC adapter present."

  • In the terminal I get:

    [jorge@alavanja ~]$ acpi
    Battery 0: Unknown, 44%
  • The battery is a few months old, and it was put in place by the official dell guys through warranty. There was no malfunction
    or anything weird with it until now.

Any ideas? Did the battery died by letting it drain to 6%? I knew this was not ideal, but I didn't expect it to simply die..

Last edited by geo909 (2016-05-03 20:34:17)

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#2 2016-05-03 20:36:08

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

I was going to suggest removing said battery for a few minutes with the system disconnected from AC power.  But, reading between the lines, it does not sound as if it is a removable battery.

Letting it drain to 6% is not supposed to kill it.  The battery system is supposed to prevent over discharge.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#3 2016-05-03 20:40:40

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
Website

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

No, draining to 6% definitely wouldn't hurt a (otherwise functional) battery at all.  There's some controversy over a complete drain - but working at a cafe where people habitually trip over wires unplugging everyone's computers without their knowing, I've had my laptop battery completely drain until my laptop powered off many times.  No harm has yet come of it.  I don't advise such full drains, but in contrast 6% is perfectly fine.

What is far more likely to cause issues is a bad AC adapter.  Are you using the stock/original adapter?

There are others here with the engineering background to give more educated answers than my own, but I can also say from a wealth of experience with abused and/or neglected laptops, that battery diagnostics are very fragile: once anything is outside the norm, none of the values output from acpi mean anything at all, it just becomes nonsensical noise.  Under many cases, a full charge/drain cycle will get things back on track - but it sounds like that is not an option here as it sounds like it doesn't charge at all.

To really confirm the last point, have you just powered it off and left it plugged in overnight?  Don't trust the battery state information, just give it plenty of time to get a full and uninterupted charge, and then try powering it on without being plugged in.  I've recovered some seemingly terminal batteries (no pun intended) with this approach, and they went on to live several more happy years.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#4 2016-05-03 20:48:31

geo909
Member
Registered: 2008-09-07
Posts: 309

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

Thanks for your quick replies.

ewaller wrote:

I was going to suggest removing said battery for a few minutes with the system disconnected from AC power.  But, reading between the lines, it does not sound as if it is a removable battery.

Letting it drain to 6% is not supposed to kill it.  The battery system is supposed to prevent over discharge.

No, it is removable. I haven't tried what you suggested, will do that now.

Trilby wrote:

No, draining to 6% definitely wouldn't hurt a (otherwise functional) battery at all.  There's some controversy over a complete drain - but working at a cafe where people habitually trip over wires unplugging everyone's computers without their knowing, I've had my laptop battery completely drain until my laptop powered off many times.  No harm has yet come of it.  I don't advise such full drains, but in contrast 6% is perfectly fine.

What is far more likely to cause issues is a bad AC adapter.  Are you using the stock/original adapter?

There are others here with the engineering background to give more educated answers than my own, but I can also say from a wealth of experience with abused and/or neglected laptops, that battery diagnostics are very fragile: once anything is outside the norm, none of the values output from acpi mean anything at all, it just becomes nonsensical noise.  Under many cases, a full charge/drain cycle will get things back on track - but it sounds like that is not an option here as it sounds like it doesn't charge at all.

To really confirm the last point, have you just powered it off and left it plugged in overnight?  Don't trust the battery state information, just give it plenty of time to get a full and uninterupted charge, and then try powering it on without being plugged in.  I've recovered some seemingly terminal batteries (no pun intended) with this approach, and they went on to live several more happy years.

Thanks, that explains the acpi value (btw in the bios too, it says 45%). I am using the stock adaptor. I will try a different adaptor too.

In any case, I'll do what you suggested, maybe leave it plugged overnight and see what happens.

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#5 2016-05-03 21:13:38

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

Li-Ion and LiPolymer batteries will die permanently if the voltage on a cell gets too low.  Modern laptops and phones will disconnect the cell before that happens to prevent further discharge. When charging current becomes available, the cells are charged and life goes on.   I cannot help wonder whether Dell has done something clever that requires software to come in and do something to re-enable cells. 

I also bet you have one of those smart stupid Dell chargers that have three pins -- the third pin is there to force you to by a Dell charger.  In truth, Dell moved some of the charging logic out of the laptop.  When you have the charger connected, look around in /sys/class/power and find the tree for your AC adapter.  Look for 'files' that tell you about the charger status.  See if it knows any details about the charger, or whether it is unknown as well.

Any chance of booting Windows?  Maybe Dell put some secret sauce in the Window drivers for their system.  Also, power up your BIOS/System setup pre-boot menus and see if there are any tools in their for managing batteries.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#6 2016-05-04 17:34:36

geo909
Member
Registered: 2008-09-07
Posts: 309

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

ewaller wrote:

Li-Ion and LiPolymer batteries will die permanently if the voltage on a cell gets too low.  Modern laptops and phones will disconnect the cell before that happens to prevent further discharge. When charging current becomes available, the cells are charged and life goes on.   I cannot help wonder whether Dell has done something clever that requires software to come in and do something to re-enable cells. 

I also bet you have one of those smart stupid Dell chargers that have three pins -- the third pin is there to force you to by a Dell charger.  In truth, Dell moved some of the charging logic out of the laptop.  When you have the charger connected, look around in /sys/class/power and find the tree for your AC adapter.  Look for 'files' that tell you about the charger status.  See if it knows any details about the charger, or whether it is unknown as well.

Any chance of booting Windows?  Maybe Dell put some secret sauce in the Window drivers for their system.  Also, power up your BIOS/System setup pre-boot menus and see if there are any tools in their for managing batteries.

I do have windows as well. Both in bios and in windows, the ac adapter is recognized, and there seem to be relevant files under /sys/class. So the adapter is not to blame.

In windows I get a "Plugged, battery not charging", and I got a gazillion pages on google. The problem is that the solutions vary from tapping near the port or blowing the pins, to upgrading the bios, changing motherboards, buying a new battery, doing an exorcism etc. And on top of that everybody's solutions seems not to be working for somebody else. The dell support seemed to be a huge waste of time for most of the cases too and I don't have a warranty anymore.

I guess I'll go to a refurbished store and ask them if I can try a battery or a different adapter, then buy it if it works.

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#7 2016-05-04 17:57:02

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,739

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

geo909 wrote:

The problem is that the solutions vary from tapping near the port or blowing the pins, to upgrading the bios, changing motherboards, buying a new battery, doing an exorcism etc. And on top of that everybody's solutions seems not to be working for somebody else. The dell support seemed to be a huge waste of time for most of the cases too and I don't have a warranty anymore.

Copy that.  You missed the burning incense.  Most of the 'solutions' are myths born of a modern cargo cult.  Some "solutions" that may have worked in the day of Nickle Cadmium or lead acid cells to remove dendritic shorts or whickers won't help with Lithium metal or Lithium polymer  batteries.  In fact, they can be catastrophic.

I guess I'll go to a refurbished store and ask them if I can try a battery or a different adapter, then buy it if it works.

Probably the best solution


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#8 2016-05-04 18:17:04

geo909
Member
Registered: 2008-09-07
Posts: 309

Re: After near drain, my laptop batter won't charge and acpi info is wrong

ewaller wrote:
geo909 wrote:

The problem is that the solutions vary from tapping near the port or blowing the pins, to upgrading the bios, changing motherboards, buying a new battery, doing an exorcism etc. And on top of that everybody's solutions seems not to be working for somebody else. The dell support seemed to be a huge waste of time for most of the cases too and I don't have a warranty anymore.

Copy that.  You missed the burning incense.  Most of the 'solutions' are myths born of a modern cargo cult.  Some "solutions" that may have worked in the day of Nickle Cadmium or lead acid cells to remove dendritic shorts or whickers won't help with Lithium metal or Lithium polymer  batteries.  In fact, they can be catastrophic.

I guess I'll go to a refurbished store and ask them if I can try a battery or a different adapter, then buy it if it works.

Probably the best solution

Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks for your input.

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