not charging fully ?

my alienware 15 has suddenly stopped charging beyond 87% ? was fine about 3 or 4 weeks ago but now it wont reach 100% any ideas what this could be folks,says plugged in not charging when it gets to 87 %

 

Check the battery health in HWinfo or a similar application. It might needs servicing. Disable express charging in the bios.

 

hi,done the check as you said with hwinfo,cant see anything that looks out of place
wear level says 21.2%
and cant disable express charging in bios
as its express or standard & it was set to standard
ive changed to express to see if that does anything,strange as it would charge to 100% about 4 weeks ago

 

No dont put it on express, that makes it worse. Wear levels is quite high by the way. How old is your laptop?

That wear level caused your battery nto to fully charge.

 

was purchased last year but not by me,its secondhand & its suddenly charged to 100% changing it to express !

got no complaints about performance on this laptop & did add a m2ssd drive which increased performance ! gaming on this is no problem and runs most very well,its got the gtx 970M 16gb ram with i5 CPU and i can run gta5 and far cry primal with no lag etc,dont know how long it will last as its got no warranty left but at the moment its great

what percentage should i be going to before i charge it ? ive not been running it right down before i plug the power adaptor in

 

THe best is to not stress the battery, this means dont drain it fully often, do not let it get too hot. drain it till like 60% once in a month for calibration purposes.

 

battery doesnt seem to drain drastically or anything it lasts for a while,ive been recharging it with power adaptor round about 30% left and a couple of times ive ran it down to 10%,maybe previous owner had this plugged in constantly causing wear level 21.2%,but laptop has been good and im pleased with its performance

had a few laptops in my time 2 alienwares and msi etc and cant say any of them have had outstanding battery life

 

check to see whether desktop charging mode is turned on? Right click your battery icon

 

desktop mode is disabled

 

i purchased this laptop for £600 uk pounds the warranty had just expired and its like brandnew condition ! asked dell about extending warranty but they are far to expensive so i know the risks & will keep my fingers crossed,nice laptops to look at etc & great when running good but my personal opinion is they are very unreliable !

dont think i would spend megabucks on a new alienware unless it came with at least a 5 year warranty free as most alienware forums ive looked at are full of complaints and faulty laptops,its a shame as they do look the part but not worth the high price tag

 

Constantly plugged in is less damaging that running a battery down to 10% a battery is made for often around 300~500 or sometimes 1000 cycles. From 100 to 0 is 1 cycle. But a full cycle does not damage than for example multiple times from only 100 tot 80%.

Personal experiences ofcourse. But mine has been running like a champ for more than a year now with very heavy usage (using it everyday in the office and after at home, using it for more than 12 hours a day during weekdays).

 

dont get me wrong i love this thing but who knows how long it will last ! i purchased an alienware about 3 years ago brandnew from dell cost me about £1200 & was very dissapointed in its performance & sold it 5 months later at a big loss,purchased an msi laptop with a years warranty left on ebay and destroyed the alienware in performance !! i needed a laptop quickly and seen this one so i did buy it knowing the risks without any warranty ! would deffo have picked an msi over this if one was available at the time & still have regrets about selling the msi i owned but i use my desktop pc mostly so the alienware will sit for long periods not being used as did the msi,i go to spain a lot & need a laptop for when im there hence reason i made this purchase

 

I dont like the MSI laptops. THey feel poor in terms of construction. But if you buy equal specs then you can expect equal performance. If you buy a higher specced MSI for example, ofcourse it will run faster.

 

Turn on desktop mode, just make sure to Run as Admin, otherwise it is good as useless. Yeah @rinneh, we are seeing pretty wear levels on alienware.

 

Whats your wear level?

Mine is stuck since day one at 1.8% wear.

tbh i dont get the desktop mode. For me it just stays at 100%. Do I need to discharge it manually to 50%?

 

4.5% after gaming on battery @ ultra settings. Day 1 at 0% wear level.
Its actually worse than Lenovo/Dell's Charge Set or Quick Set. Based on our usage it takes down (sort of telemetry) with windows API anyway, for me after 6 months usage it charges to only 95% and shows 100% when plugged in. on my lenovo after 4 years of heavy gaming only 10%-20% wear level. Dell must provide manual way setting charge thresholds to 60 or 80% which helps in maintaining longer shelf life for battery than buying it every 2 years.

 

just turn it on, after a few days it will manually discharge the battery and let it stay at around 70 - 80%

my wear level is pretty high as well. 11% currently. Using my laptop since June last year

 

I love that function on my old Vaio Z, had it on 80% battery lived more than 4 years.

Hmm strange, it never did anything for me regarding the discharge manually. Might it be because I unplug the PSU when I move from home to the office?

Do you have express charging enabled by the way? It wears the battery out quicker.

 

It usually takes a few days until the discharge takes place, at least 5 days to a week iinm. If u unplug your psu any time within this period the waiting period will be reset

yes I had it turned on all the time, only disabled it yesterday when I updated to 1.3.10 bios

 

During BIOS update, it rests to Disabled State, a known fact. In fact I owned VAIO CR which was idling at 65C-75C. While gaming it rose 95C and died of overheat. Back then, I was a noob didn't know how to fix things and all. But now, I'm learning to fix and sometimes break things and fix 'em afterwards. After couple of days I'll post my repaste details after consulting Dell, the results are impressive. Currently readying the screenshots.