Vostro 1500 abrupt shutdown on battery

I have recently been having problems with my vostro 1500. It will abruptly shutoff while on battery. I can't verify if it is the same every time but it seems to always occur when the battery is around 70% charge. I had originally suspected that it was overheating, as i8kfangui would occasionally give cpu temps of 50C+, however I have just disassembled the computer and cleaned the cooling assembly, removed and reapplied thermal paste, and the problem still persists. I have just closely monitored the computer prior to shut down and temps were never higher than 35C, so I don't think the temps are the problem. Information on the battery says that it is charging normally but I may see reduced run times. Is the battery shot?

Probably unrelated, but around Christmas, I had blue-screens and eventually could not boot the computer at all. I was able to run an HD diagnostic and discovered bad sectors. I have replaced the hard drive and the system seems ok, but I do not think that I was having the abrupt shut down issue prior to this.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

 

Your battery is probably only holding a fraction of its original capacity, but not reporting such correctly. Since doing a full discharge (running the battery until the laptop shuts off) hasn't been helping it recalibrate, I'd say it may be time for a new battery...

 

I would be inclined to believe that the battery is the problem, however, when I press the battery monitor button on the battery itself, it displays 4 out of 5 lights, indicating that it has charge.

As an experiment, I allowed the battery to run down last night. As expected, around 68% battery, the computer abruptly turned off. Subsequent attempts to start the computer resulted in running for 1-2 minutes before another abrupt shutdown. However, this morning after letting the computer sit overnight without charging, I was able to start the computer and it let the battery discharge to ~48% (about 30 minutes) before I experienced another abrupt turn off. This leads me to believe that the battery has charge.