Battery sloooooow charging.

I have a 18 months old Acer Aspire 3. I use the laptop unplugged and stop it when the battery meter indicate 21 % left . Now, I plug it and it charges the way it should for like 15 min. Then, the rate of charge drop to next to nothing and all in all, it takes 7 more hrs to get it fully charged. You will say...how do you know the charge works good for 15 min and then it drops ? Well, I live in a RV and the electricity I have comes from solar panels and an inverter. When something meaningful is plugged in the inverter, its fan works. When the charge needed is small. the fan doesn't work.So, the fan works for about 15 min and then it stops and it takes 7 more hrs to get the battery full charged. If during the charge you switch on the laptop, the fan does start right away. If you switch it off, the fan stops working not far later. Any ideas? P.S. I have Windows 10.

 

Download and launch this free application https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/battery_information_view.html

You'll see among others charge/discharge rate and battery health (as % of its original capacity).
We'll know more then.

 

Here is the result...like Chinese to me.

 

There's nothing particularly suspicious here.
What about a screenshot when the computer is charging - one when it appears to charge at a rapid pace and another one when it's seemingly slow?

When was the last time you discharged the battery fully?

 

We!!...the laptop shut off by itselft after reaching 16% so that's the maximum drain you can do. This morning, I did plug it in and after 20 min ( The inverter's fan running) I did the battery scan again ( picture battery 2 ) 5 min later, the inverter's fan did stop running so I did another scan ( picture battery 3 ). Yesterday ,I did test my 2 laptop battery chargers and they both had 19.4 volts out.

 

By fully discharging the battery you have re-calibrated the battery-meter which is why battery health decreased from 77% in the first screenshot to 59% in the subsequent ones.

As you can see your hunch was correct - initially the battery was being charged at 19,8W (screen 2) and subsequently it slowed down to barely 1.5W with 50% of the capacity yet to be charged.

I would guess that the battery should be replaced. I've noticed that batteries that are old and id bad condition tend to charge very slowly.
PSU must be OK considering the fact that it does charge OK at first.

 

The laptop is only 18 months old. In the past, I had problems with old battery but they were 4-5 years old ...and the problem always was the battery would last for only a short time. This battery is not removable. Would this be covered by the warranty ?

 

After 18 months probably not - warranty for battery is usually 6 months.
Although if it's only 18 months old its battery is in a surprisingly bad nick - as you can see it only has 59% of its original capacity - for a laptop that young that is a really bad result.

Can you try to fully discharge it once again? BTW you should not do that often - it's bad for the battery but this is a situation where we wanna be sure what the actual capacity is.

 

How do you explain it went from 65.6 in the first scan to 59 in the last 2?

 

In reality it didn't - it was already at 59% at that point but the only way for the battery to "realize" that is for you to discharge the battery fully (until it switches off) and then charge it fully.

This is when the chip inside the battery adjusts the numbers of what it considers full capacity at this point.
The battery gradually loses its capacity and it has to adjust for that - 100% capacity of a new battery is not the same as 100% of 2 year old battery.

So what happened is that the notebook switched off while still showing 16% - and smart battery adjusted for that realizing that this capacity is already lost.
It's also important to fully charge the battery after it's been fully discharged - this also helps smart battery to adjust.

Sometimes battery considers some capacity lost whereas in reality it's still there - when this happens you see a notebook showing 0% battery still working.
In a situation like that once you fully discharge the battery and the fully charge it, the software i linked to will at some point show something like 105% capacity and then it will recalculate and consider it to be 100% and battery capacity will go up.

 

Did drain the battery again but this time, it went down to 5.5 %. Usually, when the laptop would shut off itself, just before it would happen, a small green bar would show in the battery icon.This time, at 10.4 %, I did get a yellow triangle warning and then, much later, a red flashing X and finally a steady red X. The other day I said the laptop did stop itself at 16 % but, it was a guess. The last real number I've seen was 17 % but I had to guess it actually did stop at 16. Two new pictures...picture 5 when the fan's inverter did stop running and picture 6 when the battery was full. So, today, the fan did run for 50 min. and then did stop. The battery was at 67 % (really good). After 4:45 hrs. the battery was full. It seems it has been running like that all summer and did start to really deteriorate only lately. Again in picture5, the battery health is at 69.4 and in picture 6, it's back to 59 % ???

 

No battery health is 59% in both. 69,4% in the first picture is current capacity at that time.

It seems 59% is what's left of the original capacity considering you've calibrated the battery twice and it's consistent.
I don't think we'll be able to do much without replacing the battery but as of now it's not that bad - two thirds in 50 minutes is not bad. The reminder still takes forever to charge but at least that 50 minutes give you something to work with.

Did you take notice of how long the notebook works on battery?
If not you can generate battery report and check.

Do that by pressing Windows key +R. Type "cmd" and hit enter. In a subsequent window type "powercfg /batteryreport".
It will show you the location of a HTML file that has some quite interesting statistics about your battery.

 

Thanks for your help !

 

Things went worse...the other day. L was using it and then BANG! did get the black screen of death. Did try to switch it on again to no avail. The next day, I did start it and it did run for maybe 5 min ana BOOM! black screen of death again. While trying to restart it, I once get preparing to auto repair message but ,lt did die on it. Now today, I did start and by pressing F8 I did get the auto repair screen again. Now., among the many options, l chose uninstall quality update since I did start having tons of problem after going through a major (hours) Windows 10 update. That did run for a few minutes but...it did die again on it. Any idea?

 

Now, I do try to start it again but nothing happen except the fan starts and the blue pilot goes on and that's it. Seems I can only get it to show the ACER booting icon only if I give it some time to rest.

 

Can you get into BIOS/EFI?

 

How do you do that? Also, I forgot to mention
that along the many problem I did get after that lengthy Windows 10 update, I was getting a warning message that there was no AMD graphic card present. Can this be some cause?

 

That should be F2 key at boot.
It's hard to pinpoint the moment so keep pressing it repeatedly.

 

Well, pressing F2 at start up I did manage to get to the Insydell20 utility page ( which to me look like a BIOS page) but it did die before I could write down the exact name of the page. I think it's insydell,20 utility startup page but I'm not sure. Now, it's stuck again. I did leave it alone for 5-6 min. but it is still stuck. What can be done from the BIOS page? I will probably won't back online for some time now.

 

The point of that exercise was to see if it's an OS issue or a hardware one.
If you were able to enter BIOS and leave the computer running and it would run fine than whatever issue you have would be OS-dependent.
Seeing that it's not the case - this surely is a hardware issue.

Does the notebook seem to be overheating?
Can you leave it for a longer time - couple of hours - and see if its running better? It might be a power delivery problem.

 

I just did start it now. With pressing F2 the page I go to is set-up utility. I may be wrong but in the previous BIOS page I have seen, there was option like boot from a disc or safe mode. Don.t see anything like that at the set-up utility page. As far as overheating...wouldn't the fan speed up? In fact, when it goes stuck, the fan will start and speed up after a certain time but it doesn't last long. Also, when it is stuck. once in a while the screen flash for half a second...it looks something is trying to start but to no avail. It looks like I might have to put back Windows 10 in ? and how?

 

The last 3 messages I sent you never did get posted. Seems I
I'm just loosing my time. Did open the laptop and did look at the fan and it was clean.

The messages I'm sending you aren't posted at all so seems we are just wasting our time.

This morning it's 50 F. here and after a full night rest, it did run for only about 10 min before dying out.

 

What messages? Private messages or posts in this thread?

 

Post in this thread. I have to deal with a &%$#%&+ signal from a public library and it's a nightmare. You type your stuff and when you,'re done, the signal had gone and the typed message disappear.

 

OK, so it doesn't seem to be Windows problem at all. More like a hardware one - based on weird battery charging curve - most likely electrical one.
Once it dies after those 10 minutes or so. Does it start charging or not?

 

Will have to check if it start charging just after it die. Now, 6 hours later I start it again. After the Acer logo, I get the message preparing auto repair. ( now I will send only short message because with long one I got tons of problem posting them)

So, after the preparing auto repair, many other options. I chose uninstall quality update.

The whole screen is blue and in the top right corner, the word uninstalling quality update and those little balls turning round and round and round.

Five minutes later, the screen goes gray...s few second later, the fan start spinning real fast and the laptop shut off.

Another situation, when it get stuck , ( the fan still running at normal speed the blue pilot on)

The only way to get out is to press and keep pressing the power button. A few times, ( 2 actually) when I did that, when I did try to restart it, I did get the message Windows didn't boot correctly and was offered many options ( like after auto repair ) to put Windows back in and such.

If the problem is electrical, when the screen goes dark (usually...more timed than never ) the blue pilot is always on ???

 

If you don't have any important data that needs saving can you just reinstall Windows or use recovery partition to revert to factory settings? With fresh Windows we will be sure that it's not an OS issue.

 

When the laptop quits. the charging keeps going.

 

This morning zi made another test.Here are the imaged I got.The first screen I got was the Acer logo and below it a message ( please wait ) I don't have s picture of that one

 

Here is the second screen I got.

 

From there I went with See advanced repair option which was this.

Wrong

From there I did chose trouble shoot and got this.

From there I did chose to uninstall update and after a few min. , the laptop die.

In the past I once had to reinstall Win. 10 on a laptop and it was a pain in the a.. These days, the only spare I have is a tablet do, unless I',m wrong. I can't download Windows on a USB stick.

And I don't think I could do that on a public computer.

It's not there in the pictures I posted but at one time I did get to a page that give the impression that one of the option was to reinstall Windows 10 but not with a stick or a CD/DVD. Is there a way to do that and...

 

Last, how do you get in safe mode on this laptop ? Wouldn't this make the situation clearer as to who is responsible for that thing to shut off on its own. I did press ,( and hold ) F8 while the Acer logo did appears but never got nowhere.

 

Also. is there a way to reinstall Windows without losing anything like pictures,documents,videos,bookmarks and such ? Thanks!

 

Yes, if you choose to "Reset this PC" Windows you have a choice on whether you want to keep your personal files or not.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...444-7de3-818c-d626-e3b5a3024da5#bkmk_section2

It's available in one of the menus on boot section.

 

Well ..my post in this thread are all mixed up the pictures don't appear in the right post some text are mixed with other post. Yesterday , on this thread I was at 4 pages...this morning I"m at 3...anyway...if you can follow ?

 

How do you go with the laptop to the pages of the pictures I did post...these pages were given to me but how to get there intentionally ? Seems to me that whatever option I chose the thing will die on me like it did happen twice while choosing , (uninstall quality update). Hope I'm wrong.

 

Some place, I make edit, post them then...the edit disappear...c!ick on edit to do it again...nothing happen

 

Either hold down SHIFT while rebooting the computer or switch it off and then on and while you see Acer logo again force it off and repeat it twice. That should trigger a message that your computer failed to boot and give you recovery options.

As for posts I had to merge them. While I understand why you have to do it, I can't leave them like that.

 

Just found this out online...

The screen might remain black when there is a corrupted graphics driver or a problem with the LCD display backlight. To test the display, attach an external monitor, and restart the computer. This test is helpful if the display is black but you can hear that the computer is operating. ------------ I think that this post of me was lost but I wrote to you that among the many troubles I had after that big Windows 10 update I always get the message the AMD graphic card driver is missing

 

In my opinion, it doesn't seem to be the case.
Anyway - use the "reset this PC" option while keeping your documents.
It's impossible to diagnose if it's a hardware or software issue if Windows isn't at least stable enough to rule it out.

As an alternative you might download Ubuntu to a USB thumbdrive and boot system from it but judging by the fact that you only have access to the internet in the library I doubt you can to it.

 

Now...all is gone. I never been able to reach ( reset this PC ) because now I get absolutely no screen, the blue pilot goes on as is the fan but that's it. I got a hard drive from another Acer laptop that was using Windows 10. Could I make a swap and hope it could be started?

Now that I have nothing on the screen. if I could manage to get an Ubuntu stick could I boot it?

 

You would need to at least get to boost screen to get to boot menu. Otherwise it most likely won't boot from USB although it's remotely possible that it does have it set as a first boot device by default.
If you don't even see Acer logo at boot screen, than it's not an OS issue and swapping HDDs or USB stick won't help.

If you can, make sure that the screen is still blank when you boot the laptop while it's connected to an external screen.
Other than that I think it's time to look for a service center.

 

I did swap the HD and BOOM! the Acer logo page went on but...after 20 secs, the screen went gray

 

What happens if you enter BIOS? Will the computer keep running while you're in BIOS or will it die as well?

 

Have you looked at the battery cable? Maybe the cable has come loose a little inside, I'd disconnect it and reconnect again to see if it might be a simple problem.

 

Problem solved...I didn't touch it for 2 days. Then, I start it up. The Acer logo page goes and then the preparing auto repair message then the diagnosis your PC message and then, I got back to that page where all the advance options are offered among them, resetting that PC. Click on that and after 1 hr. of preparation and 2 hrs. of installation, Windows 10 is back in business in my laptop. Hope to make the battery charge test soon. Thanks!

 

I don't think it's the end of your issues. It's impossible for a computer to fix itself so I'm afraid it's temporary.
Was the notebook connected to PSU for those two days or not?

 

The laptop wasn't plugged. I'm replacing the freewares I lost and it did die on me while installing the GIMP. Just restarted it but now, the battery is quite low so will stop using it for today, Seems that the battery charging rate is just as bad as it was.

 

Is it the original PSU that came with a laptop?

 

Yes, it's the original. I did drain the battery ( 6-7 %) and then did plug it in. The inverter's fan was running full speed. After 20 min. the fan slowed down to mid speed ( can't remember having seen that ever)after the 2 hrs. mark, the inverter's fan did stop. Two hrs. later, the battery was full charge so total, 4 hrs. instead of 7 two weeks ago. Just found out my bookmarks are gone. Is there any chance they got moved elsewhere ? Thanks.