C640 will not run from battery?

My wife's C640 will shut down while running on battery power after 2 mins. If plugged in it will stay on all day. Bios shows its charging, generic battery is about 6 months old and shows 4 lights. Any advice would be helpful.

I searched but could not find any info on this issue. Is there any way to refresh the battery?

Thanks
Peter

 

Running XP pro, problem just started happening about a week ago. Any advice would be helpful.

 

There are situations where batteries will immediately drop deeply in capacity capability without warning - Once the laptop dies, does the batter still think it's charged? If so, could be a problem with the charging contacts on the C640. Those contact might be able to charge, but the leads that draw power from the battery for the machine operations might be loose, damaged, or very worn. Take a look inside the bay for any clues.

A good test of the contacts would be to take the Optical drive out of the other bay and insert the battery there (all C-series could use a battery in their optical bay). If it works better there, you've got a Motherboard issue. You can find motherboards pretty reasonably for those models today, but you might be better off finding her a nice d600 or something to replace it with if its a critical issue. You could also just use the blank filler plate in the battery bay, and only use an optical drive when on AC power, and use it for the battery any other times. If you're still using a C640 for anything, I'm willing to bet that you're the inventive type that likes solutions like this.

Most of all, Good luck!

 

I have had lots of problems with the generic batteries. They do tend to drop off suddenly. Is there any way you can borrow another battery for testing?