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I've been noticing for the past several days strange behavior with my battery and trying to write it off as a particular part of the setup with varying success. The best I can come up with is that it's probably something wrong with the battery itself, or the charging and indicator circuitry. Anyway, it is as such:
Only some outlets in my home will charge the battery. Most are only willing to put it on AC without charging it, which sometimes causes the hardware to limit CPU time to 800Mhz (both upper and lower limit) and sometimes doesn't. (Once it limited it to a minimum and maximum of 2200Mhz.)
When it does charge, as of today, it will report ungodly times compared to the day before yesterday. On that day, a full charge might have taken 1 hour and 30 minutes, today, it reports charging will take (in my home) 5 hours or (in a community college) 10 hours to charge by 47-50%.
I plugged it into several outlets in my home and many of these will not charge the battery at all. It is an older home. The only outlet that, previously, worked reliably was in a power strip in a room that was probably wired better than all of the rest (although it was not the closest outlet to the fusebox).
Another outlet on a different power strip farther from the fuse box worked a few days ago, but when I relocated a third power strip to a previously non-working outlet, it did not charge. I am not sure what I expected from that. Many days ago it worked on the third strip in another room on another outlet, but that was when the battery was behaving as expected.
I have just plugged it into the wall directly in yet another different outlet in my home and it, before "fully charging," worked immediately, but reported increasingly long times to charge as time went on, petering out at 5 hours then jumping to full from 53%.
3 days ago at a friend's house it plugged in and charged normally in his wall.
What has just happened - the 47% jump - takes the cake and has me convinced that this is a battery issue, not one with the wiring. Furthermore, the outlet that just charged normally no longer does. After filling out, I unplugged it, rebooted, and plugged it back in, and it doesn't charge - it's just on AC.
Does anyone have any insight into what is wrong? Would it be wrong to change to my old battery (which has fallen into disuse) with lower capacity and greater age to see if it charges properly, or would it gather useful data?
Last edited by Thisguy_ (2014-09-16 22:22:11)
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Rule out each of the components: laptop, ac adapter, its cable and battery. The house power installation should be also considered, you did not mention where you live, probably NA, although this should have been taken care of by design. However you tested the hardware in other places, so it can be safely ruled out.
Try a compliant ac adapter on your machine or try your adapter on someone else's laptop that is compatible. Do a visual/hearing check. Is there any rattle or movement inside when you shake the box? Since you have your old battery, try charging it. It should be easy to rule any of those out.
If the behaviour continues, then it might indicate a problem with the laptop[s hardware] itself. Double check the/all socket[s] and contacts/plugs along the currents path. Does it sit firm in place or is [a part of] it loose? Check the cable of the ac adapter also. You could gently bend it at several points in all directions.
Edit: You could also make simple measurements of the ac adapter and your wall sockets, should you know how and be aware of risks involved. What kind of an adapter is that? How many contacts go to the laptops socket?
Edit2: Have you ruled out the operating system as such? Another thing could be resetting the BIOS/UEFI, although this is highly improbably to be responsible.
Edit3: Typos.
Last edited by emeres (2014-09-16 23:15:09)
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I did indeed check for shorts in the charger cable - I plugged it into an outlet on which it worked, bent it in many places in all directions, and never did the light go off. I in fact loosened the connection between it and the wall and the charging light refused to so much as dim.
The charger puts out 19.5V, and I have been led to believe that the computers of the era tend to run well in varying ranges that are generally between 10 and 19 volts, so there should be power left over to charge the thing (no kidding, since it used to charge fine). When I shake the hell out of it, it does not rattle. I believe we can, from this and previous info, cross out the adapter and cable. I cannot install another operating system onto the laptop, but have not made any changes to software settings and have not updated any software for some two weeks or more, so tentatively, I suppose we can rule out the OS.
Ruling out the laptop itself would be tricky as I have no other laptop to test with, even friends', of this kind. But theoretically this just means that it isn't the laptop if the old battery charges like it used to. So, that will be my next test.
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Posting using the new battery for power now. Although an 80% charge will only last me 50 minutes, where with the new one 50% lasts 2 hours, this one charges normally; however, this is only in the one outlet (the one on the power strip). I will try plugging the old battery into that outlet to see if this could be an issue with the wiring in my house. As the outlet I used in school was in a building dedicated to the sciences, it was probably sharing a lot more electricity with other outlets (which were probably drawing inordinate amounts of power).
EDIT: Charging normally only from the one specific outlet. 50% will take about an hour and a half, which is still oddly long, but not by such great magnitude. I feel it will probably make the jump from 53% to 100%, will wait, see, and report on this if it proves either to or not to. If it does, much like the double rainbow, I will need an explanation of what it means.
Interestingly enough, the capacity shown for 53% sounds oddly close to the capacity that it used to have at 100% (about 3 hours if I remember correctly, 53% currently shows a bit over 2 for light load).
EDIT: As previously, approaching 53% power increases the purported time to reach 100%...
EDIT: By 55% the number has climbed to four hours to continue charging (from, as mentioned, 1h30m at 50%). Does this phenomenon help identify my problem? Perhaps I have defective cells?
EDIT: As per previously, the battery has jumped to full (Probably in the 57-63% range when it happened, was not around to see it).
Last edited by Thisguy_ (2014-09-17 01:27:44)
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I still suspect the AC adapter or the laptop itself.
Edit: Can you measure the output voltage of the AC adapter while loading? Does the AC adapter get hot when reaching the ~60% mark? Try to locate the hottest spot and see how hot it gets when loading an empty battery.
I guess the power strip has a small filter and some trivial protection. If you plug the adapter into wall outlet directly it also misbehaves? Proper measurements would have to be made with proper equipment to determine if you home installation is at fault. Those "throw away" multimeters are more of indicators than measurement devices, even though not all are completely useless. But the AC adapter should not be that easily susceptible to interference or other power grid related occurrences.
So the laptop comes into focus. Try something unconventional. While charging, starting from a lower than 50% level, keep it on its side or upside down. Should you have cold weather, wherever you are, charge it outside, so that it is cooled more.
Your best bet is to find someone with a similar laptop/AC adapter.
Side note: I had a descriptive post ready, but firefox got killed. Maybe I will expand further later, I think I wanted to mention something else, but I do not remember any more.
Last edited by emeres (2014-09-17 11:48:01)
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