Dell Vostro 1000 Charge Prob Please Help

I unplug my laptop and after 15 mins it says "your battery power is low (7%) if you don't plug in your computer soon it will hibernate automatically". I know its fully charged and i press the button on the battery and all lights are on..what should i do?

 

Turn off the auto standby or auto hibernation and just run that battery down. If the controller is reading the capacity wrong, it'll just keep running and hopefully recalibrate itself.

Else your battery really is on its last legs and you should get it replaced.

 

but the problem is when i unplug the power it says the 7% thing and then it says random times i have left on the battery thing like rightn ow it says 2 hours and 32 min (7%) remaining and it goes up and down 1% and the time changes up and down

 

So I'm asking you: does it actually run for 2 hours and 30 minutes?

 

No more like 40 mins..or less

 

Chances are the battery is just depleted and needs to be replaced. If this battery has the charge indicator button, see below:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/...sitelet/en/batteries_faq?c=us&l=en&cs=19#faq1


Q For what use is the strip of LED lights on my battery?
A Most Dell batteries have an LED indicator that allows users to see how much run time and how much overall battery life are available at the touch of a button.
To check battery charge, press the button and the number of lights that appear will tell you charge status. If all lights appear, you have a fully charged battery. Each light that appears accounts for approximately 20% charge.
To check the battery health, press and hold the status button on the battery charge gauge for at least 3 seconds. If no lights appear, the battery is in good condition and approximately more than 80 percent of its original charge capacity remains. Each light represents incremental degradation. If five lights appear, approximately less than 60 percent of the charge capacity remains, and you should consider replacing the battery.

 

all lights light up but it only says 4% charged and it keeps going from charging to not charging

 

Alright, what does it say in BIOS then? On the battery info page there should be a blurb like "your battery is charging normally, but may be reaching the end of its lifecycle"... do you get a message like that?

 

there is nothing about the battery in the bios

 

He's right about no battery info, that's an old Phoenix BIOS.

As far as battery health, if all the lights light up, you probably didn't hold the button down long enough. If the battery is 100% healthy, there are generally no lights.

I'm still pretty positive you need to replace the battery as it is at least 2 or 3 years old at this point.

You might also flash the BIOS: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=238511