Help with my stupid power

Hey guys, I've got a fairly old Dell C610 which does me alright. I'm having a few problems though.

First, my battery. The battery I got with the computer was dodgy and only held charge for about half an hour, so I got a new one.

It was awesome for the first few weeks and kept going for three hours. Whenever the power ran out, it would go through the normal warnings and then hibernate my computer. But suddenly after an hour it would shut down my computer without warning and wouldn't let me turn it on until i plugged it in again. According to my power meter it was still holding full charge right up until it turned off - am i wrong in assuming this is just a problem with my windows? Should I do a re-install or buy a new battery?

Second, I've got a new power cable and the rubber sheath around the end where it connects to the computer is breaking. Anyone have any tips how I can fix this?

Thanks,

Jonny.

 

Does the BIOS have a battery calibration option? This involves a calibrated charge / discharge cycle and then resetting of the actual capacity of the battery.

If the battery has lost capacity (they all do with time) and the battery info still shows the full capacity then Windows calculates the time remaining based on that full capacity. Suddenly it discovers that there is no more power remaining!

Image drinking from a half-full bottle where the half is at the top, not the bottom.

However, if that almost new battery is only a few months old, it should not have lost much capacity. If you are running XP, disable the action when the battery state is critical and see how long it runs with 0% remaining. Maybe that lost capacity will re-appear. [Disabling the action in Vista can be done, but I think it is more difficult to set up.]

John