ASUS AC cable blinking green/orange

Hi,

I have tried to find a solution to my problem in a few places, however I can't really see a conclusive answer ofnhow to fix it.

I noticed when my computer (ASUS Zenbook UX301L, 2.5 years old) had been off overnight (and still connected to power, which is how I usually leave it), that the LED light on the AC power adapter was blinking green/orange. (Orange = charging, green = charged, normally)

I took the cable out and put it in again, upon which it was fine for a few seconds (just orange as it was ~96%), and then it starts to blink green/orange again. No error messages in Windows 10 (It just says '96% charged, not charging'). I also tried to troubleshoot the hardware etc, but nothing seems to solve this problem.

Letting the battery go low would not be a good idea seeing as the battery % is not changing on the status icon, and i know it is not the problem that the battery is 'too high to charge'. The high 96% shown cannot be correct. This is a new problem and has not occurred until recently; the LED is not supposed to blink like this when it reaches a high % anyway.

Someone suggested to take out the battery or to just drain the battery and start again, however, I don't quite like the sound of that? Do I need to be in the BIOS to drain the battery? (Because I assume it will take ages for it to drain in the BIOS)
Any other suggestions?

 

If your battery is at 96% then it means that is charged so there is no need to be charged. So just try to use it for a little bit maybe 20-30% and then check it again and see if it charges.

 

Unfortunately the solution is not so simple, see additional info in my edited text above..

Has anyone been able to solve this problem? :S

 

An alternating color charging light is indicative of a charging circuit failure. It's hard to know where the failure lies.

Draining the battery until it is critical, then rebooting into the BIOS setup and letting it run until it powers off will recalibrate the battery chip. That may be the problem. It also may be a problem with the charger, battery circuit on the motherboard, or the battery itself. Again, it's hard to know without swapping things out.

 

Thank you ALLurGroceries, I have seen similar suggestions on other forums, so this seems to be the only thing to do right now; to drain the battery until it is critical and reboot in the BIOS.

I am not sure of how to do that. I'm not bad with computers, but, do you mean that I should leave the computer on until it is around ~1-2%ish, restart it, enter BIOS and then let the last % drain?
And to get to the BIOS, I would basically press F1 or whatever the computer tells me to do when I restart the computer?
And then I'll just stay there until the battery is drained, and charge it again using the same cable?

There is no risk of losing all my information..? I use Dropbox for most things so I'll just save all the other stuff on the computer.
What about all the programs that I have installed, I assume they will not disappear if I drain the battery completely like this?

Best,
Josephine

 

Actually, I just realised my major problem is that it keeps saying 96 % on my battery, ie I will not know when the battery is critical....

Is there another way of fixing this?

 

As long as the hard drive is accessible - one way or another - your information should be fine. Draining the battery should have zero impact on your data.

Yes: Bring it to a technician. The battery calibration method outlined previously might work for you, yet there's a chance a component will need to be replaced. If you can open it up yourself and do that, great! You just need to be able to isolate the problem and acquire any replacement components then.

 

Thank you for your help, all of you!
As suggested, I let the battery drain out, but as I could not know when it ran out, I simply let it drain out in normal Windows mode.

Now it is almost fully charged again and the computer is fully functional.

Thank you!
Best,
Josephine

 

Great to hear, Josephine!