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    ASUS is pretty SMART :(

    Discussion in 'ASUS Gaming Notebook Forum' started by iman, May 7, 2012.

  1. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    My G73Jh was working fine since day 0. I used it as desktop replacement, so I never bothered about battery life. I considered it as short capacity UPS replacement rather than a notebook battery.

    May 1, the battery LED starts blinking in amber. It is saying that it is charging, but it is always 0% available until now. I tried everything, even putting it in freezer, and none helped.

    In addition, you know what, I checked the warranty, the date for the battery is Apr 30 2012. Yeah, great! It failed right after the warranty is over! Smart Assus...
     
  2. HopelesslyFaithful

    HopelesslyFaithful Notebook Virtuoso

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    what country do you like in? Batteries are easy to replace and build fron scratch if you following some how toos...you really dont need to do any how tos but if you are not tech savy then its a good idea. Also eBay has after market batteries really cheap.
     
  3. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    Thanks for replying. I live in Indonesia. How cheap is it? I checked, it's about 100+ USD here, which is not that cheap to me :/
    love-battery.com offer 80 usd, which will be about 110-120 after import tax stuff. To me, it's a nice save if it failed on the warranty phase.

    Anyway, since I only used it at home, currently I'm using my old UPS to back it up. problem is [temporarily] solved.
     
  4. ViciousXUSMC

    ViciousXUSMC Master Viking NBR Reviewer

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    Batteries never have lasted forever, just some irony in your case that it failed right after warranty :D But it was not just a failure im sure it was degrading over time it just finally it the point where it showed up.
     
  5. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    Yes, I guess so. It's just that I rarely watch that battery icon on the notification and most of the time it's on AC power. Not most of the time, I always plug the AC power, indeed :D

    From dummy point of view, they --the tech guys-- should implement that if it's using AC Power, just leave the battery, consider it's not plugged in.
     
  6. regondo

    regondo Newbie

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    Hi Iman, the same thing happened to me and I figured it's probably the laptop not detecting the current battery charge.

    What I did was I leave it on battery until the computer goes off and do a full recharge afterwards. After that, the light went back to normal and my laptop now detects the correct amount of charge left in my battery. Might want to give that a try.
     
  7. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    It is worth a try, but if the laptop was plugged in all the time with the battery in, it would drain and charge so it may just have reached the end of it's lifespan.
     
  8. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    I did it before I created this thread. But, due to my curiosity, I tried it again. My logical sense said that with it's stated 0% and the led blinking, the laptop would die. And yes, it powered off once I plug the AC connector out.

    Got into panic mode since it didn't turn on when I plug the AC back in. The solution was plugging the battery out a while and plugged it back in.

    I charged it for about 3 hours, it didn't go green. since I have some work to finish, I turn it on. The icon still says 0% available. So, I guess my battery has already RIP lol

    Anyway, lets get this over so life can goes on :D
    Thanks for your replies. I appreciate it.
     
  9. killa22

    killa22 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Did this before on the first gaming laptop I purchased -- a dell xps 17 way back in 2005.

    Bottom line: you should not leave your laptop plugged in all the time (with the battery attached). If you are using it as a desktop replacement, do not leave the battery hooked up to your laptop -- or at least attempt to drain/deplete the battery at least once in a while on a regular basis.

    Leaving it in all the time will kill your battery.
     
  10. DashTheHand

    DashTheHand Notebook Geek

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    Sometimes they will honor the warranty if its only a couple days out of warranty. Never hurts to try to get it replaced.

    Don't be meek about it though. Complain enough that you feel like they take the hint that a battery shouldn't die within a year, and get them on your side about it.
     
  11. HopelesslyFaithful

    HopelesslyFaithful Notebook Virtuoso

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    The battery has a special board called the PCM/PCB once it is fully charged the battery will be "disengaged" The PCM/PCB cut the charge when its fully charge and will not recharge it until it looses ~5% battery. Normal batteries that takes about a week. Leaving it in will never hurt it unless your laptop makes it run hot...which is rare. Also when i say hot i mean it has to be hot enough where it hurts to touch it. Being warm will not hurt it.

    As I said above the laptop does nothing. It is regulated by the PCM/PCB. It is extremely unlikely that the PCM/PCB stopped working because the battery would explode without the PCM/PCB in most situations.

    tijo is right it could be that the laptop is misreading the battery and it needs a good calibration. If you leave it on AC 24/7 you need to calibrate it once every couple months. I actually need to do that to mine. You need to boot the laptop into BIOS. This is done by pressing F2 F10 or delete normally. It could be a different key so watch what your laptop says in the bottom of the screen during a restart. Once in BIOS pull it off of AC and let it drain until the laptop crashes. Calibration only works in BIOS. It will not work in windows. Also the point of letting it crash is that the battery can be drained all the way to where the PCB/PCM shuts down the battery. Because many a time windows misreads it. Now one part I am forgetting is that do you recharge while it is off or do you recharge in windows?
     
  12. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    I can confirm that it's only 'warm', not that hot.

    Explode!? Are you serious?

    Most of the time, yes, it's 24/7. I run some server via virtual machines on it.

    FYI, I tried that method of discharging (keep the laptop on on BIOS page). And I also recharge it while the laptop's off. It didn't help. Last couple hour checked, it's blinking again and still 0% available (I'm currently at work). I'm pretty sure Windows isn't miss-reading this value since the laptop goes off if I pull the AC power out.

    BTW, adding the curiosity, is there any manual of led blinking status? Mine is blinking in amber and the windows nofitication is saying something like "0% Available, charging"
     
  13. HopelesslyFaithful

    HopelesslyFaithful Notebook Virtuoso

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    how long did it stay on in BIOS?

    pictures of a guy replacing a laptop battery...note dont remove plastic...it is probably keeping batteries from making contact and insulated from static/electricity. Remember you should need 18650 battery i think...want to double check because its been awhile.

    http://substack.net/posts/c537dd/Laptop-Battery-Hack

    an exploded cell lol. Though it is really more of an expansion..didn't actually fully blow up or catch on fire. :)

    http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=9858.0

    If this is a legit video its the extreme end...they purposely did this though.

    http://wn.com/Lithium_Ion_Battery_Fire_Suppression
     
  14. iman

    iman Notebook Guru

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    First attempt on BIOS was less than 2 minutes. I've just done another test: 0 seconds lol

    The burning laptop video is scary! So, I guess I'll just remove the battery out of my laptop and keep it plugging into the UPS.

    Ah, blinking and keep blinking. I guess it's telling me, I'm dead!
     
  15. HopelesslyFaithful

    HopelesslyFaithful Notebook Virtuoso

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    yea its a bad battery. You need to rebuild or buy a new one. I would take it apart and see if any batteries ruptured and if so i would just buy a new one to be on the safe side because it might be a bad PCM/PCB...i personally dont know how to tell a good one vs a bad one.