G50VT shuts down if power cord is removed

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this, having just joined this forum and all, but this seemed right.

My G50VT was having some battery problems a few months ago, the battery wasn't lasting as long as it used to, but then one day it suddenly shut down and would boot up unless it was plugged in. It would immediately crash if the power cord was unplugged. I ordered a new battery, and when I got it seemed to have a pretty small charge, but worked fine. Today however, I powered up my laptop with the new battery and when I removed the power cord, it crashed again. This battery is brand new, and it is crashing exactly like my old one used to. I'm thinking that this has to be a problem with the computer, it's just too much of a coincidence.

Any thoughts? Did I just get really unlucky with the second battery? It there something wrong with the computer?

 

Yeah it's possible that something in that battery circuit is toasted, which is unfortunate because that is hard to diagnose. You can look at the contacts where the battery connects on the laptop, if they are bent or corroded, that could be an easy fix. Otherwise it could be a motherboard problem or perhaps a faulty AC adapter not charging the battery.

Does the battery charge at all? If so, does it ever fully charge while the system is powered on? Is there any difference between the old one and the new one in terms of the forced power-off?

 

Thanks for the reply, to answer some of your questions:

The metal prongs where the battery connects to the laptop do not seem strange or different than they used to be.

I do not think that it's a problem with the AC adapter because I've gotten a replacement one of those as well.

The battery charges up to 73% and stops there. The computer says that it's still charging, but it doesn't make any more progress. The same thing happened to the old battery, except it charged to around 57% before stopping. (if it helps, there is a notification saying that there is something wrong with the old battery, but not the new one.)

There is no difference in the forced power off. When I unplug the power cord, the computer immediately shuts down. Even if it's in sleep mode it turns off.

 

Since the battery isn't charging, it's either a problem with the EC, the battery charging circuit itself, or you've got incredibly bad luck with batteries.

Does it ever fully charge if you leave the battery charging with the computer powered off? Does the battery LED on the case ever change to 'charged' or is it always orange/red for charging?

Have you tried going into the BIOS setup (hit F2 when you first turn it on) and resetting to user defaults (to clear the CMOS)?

It could also be a problem with the EC (embedded controller, which manages power states and other low level hardware functions), which can sometimes be fixed by either clearing the CMOS or reflashing the BIOS altogether.

If you are going to flash the bios, do NOT do it from an ntfs partition. See http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/174395-bios-update-guide-asus-notebooks.html

 

The battery never fully charges, and I've left it charging for like 2 days while the power is off.

I have not yet attempted to do anything relating to the bios, I'll reset and flash the bios and see if that helps. Would the process need to be done once for each battery?

 

No, the batteries themselves have chips that report their charge, but since both of them are doing the same thing (never fully charging, etc) they wouldn't seem to be the problem. It's more likely something with your computer itself.

 

Well, I just upgraded the BIOS and reset all settings to default, but no luck. Any other ideas? Do you think it's worth it to get a different battery, see if that is what's causing the problem?

 

It's most likely a hardware problem, on the motherboard. I'm not sure there is anything more to try for easy fixes.