Aspire 5251 battery only charges to 11%

My son's Aspire 5251 is about 4 months old, and now the battery will only charge to 11%. I bought the notebook here, in the US and sent it to him in Ghana. He has a friend with the same notebook that had the same problem. His friend purchased a new battery, and so far, that seems to have fixed the problem for him. I have several questions. Have there been reported problems with this battery? Is the battery covered by the warranty? Will the fact that he lives in Ghana affect the warranty?

He is using a power cable recommended by the local computer shop, and the notebook runs perfectly fine on AC power.

I would appreciate any help or insight anyone can provide.
Thanks in advance,
allstondave

 

Tell him to update BIOS to the most recent one- there's a lot of them for this model so it looks like there were quite a few things that needed improvement/changing. He doesn't need to flash them all- just the most recent one.
Warranty for battery is usually 6 months.

 

downloads, thanks for your response. I am not familiar with flashing the BIOS and I am sure my son is not either. Could you provide step by step instructions, or point me to a link for that info?
Thanks, again,
allstondave

 

Here's the latest BIOS for Acer Aspire 5251- it's version 2.06.
What needs to be done is- computer connected to the power source, battery inserted and charged (at least as much as it can be), no USB devices connected, anti-virus, firewall and Wi-Fi disabled.
Extract the archive with BIOS- go to Windows folder and double click on XEWxx206.exe. Confirm if needed and don't even touch the keyboard until you see Windows login screen again- BIOS update can take a few minutes and will reboot your notebook afterwards.
I can't guarantee it's going to help with the battery- it may be caused by BIOS and may be repairable, it may be caused by BIOS and the battery may be already damaged, it may be also completely unrelated to BIOS but since there are a lot of BIOS updates for this model it's quite likely there were many changes and it's worth a try.
You may still have to buy a new battery or RMA this one but with new BIOS the new one may not get damaged anymore.

 

Thanks for another quick reply. A tech at Acer gave us a proceedure to try to reset the battery, which we will try. If that doesn't work, we will try the BIOS update.
Thanks again,
allstondave

 

i also have that problem, its stuck on 88 percent, and does not work has a battery

 

Hi I am havin this same problem with my battery can you give me some instructions as to how to reset the battery for me to see if it would work before i try the BIOS update.

 

We ended up getting ACER to replace the battery. After several emails, back and forth, ACER wanted me to return the battery, but after I explained that it was in Ghana, I convinced them to send me a new battery, which I got for free, didn't even have to pay for shipping. Then mailed the battery to Ghana, (not sure if this was legal) and the new battery works fine.

 

Ohh, well I live in Trinidad so I guess I will have to get a family member to purchase one and ship it for me.

Thanks for the feedback allstondave