Battery Problems with my V6V

Hi All, here's my story:
I noticed my battery light was coming on sporatically with the AC adapter plugged in. One day, it was always on. I unplugged the AC and operated on battery for a couple hours and then tried to charge it back up. Now my poor V6V only charges to ~80%. The battery light stays on but it cannot charge to 100% any more. So, after looking in this forum (reading about the evils of battery calibration) and other online resources, I finally buckled and tried ASUS tech support. The online help was a joke but I mananged to get a decent rep on the phone and he told me to run batt. calibration, assuring me that I could get a new battery if things got messed up. The 1st step of battery calibration (charging the battery) never ended (I gave it ~20 hours). Thus I sent my battery to ASUS on a Tuesday afternoon and they sent me a new one to my door Thursday morning (I was very impressed!). Anyways, the whole point of this too-long post is that my battery light is on again!! After only a month and a half with my new battery! Has anyone seen this before or have an idea what could be going on? I have to assume the problem is with the actual notebook as 2 broken batteries is a hard coincidence to swallow. Please let me know your thoughts.

 

Are you on a V6v or V6va? One important issue is that there are some with a V6va which uses a 90w PS and they may have bought an extra ac adapter for a v6v - which is 60w...... if that's the case, the system wouldn't be able to power the system enough and it would be a fight to power it as it grabbed the extra power it needed from the battery.

If that's not the case - which I'll assume it's not --- then the light should go out after it's charged...... if you turn the system off...... that light should only power up till it's charged. If it then goes out - you really don't have a problem..... if it stays on or starts blinking, then you've got a problem in your battery.

 

Thanks for your quick response Justin. As you assumed, I have a v6v with the original AC adapter. As is, the charging light never goes out (unless I unplug the AC power). Before this 'always on' state, it would come on for a few seconds at a time, usually when I just executed a program or accessed the HD. I should also mention that the battery is now in a permanent state of 99% - it can't get to 100% - though by the look of the charging light, it sure is trying to! This is my second battery to do this. I suppose I should call ASUS and get a third...

 

Yeah... it should go to 100% - that's actually what shuts off the power supply--- and therefore the light.

It's very odd...... but anything can happen - I think, although very rare, you have another bad battery. Don't be discouraged though.... you represent basically all V6 battery problems...... so it's even more unlikely anyone else will have one... and hopefully the third time's a charm for you.

 

Hello Canadajer,

I noticed your posting while doing some research of my own and registered here just to reply to your posting.

I'm experiencing the same problem. Some weeks ago, I noticed that the charge light never went out. The battery never seemed to get past 99%. I ignored this, mostly, as I wasn't too concered about it loosing the 1%.

Sitting in class the other day I noticed that my battery was discharging much faster than normal. When I got home, I discovered that it wasn't discharging faster at all. It just couldn't charge past 78%. 1% I can live with. A loss of 22% is a bit drastic.

I got the same results on the battery calibration - it wouldn't get anywhere. I left it for more than 24 hours with no results.

Not trusing Windows to begin with, I booted into my Linux installation and took a look at battery stats there. After 24 hours of "charging" on the calibration setting, it reported about 250 mAh of capacity. I let it run and monitored the reported capacity. After a few minutes of patient waiting, the meter finally hit 0 mAh... but the laptop didn't power down. I've now left it running on battery for an hour with it reporting 0% capacity.

So it isn't that the battery isn't fully charged, it simply doesn't realize that it is. I don't know much about batteries, to be honest, but it would seem to me that if a battery doesn't know that it's fully charged and still keeps on charging, this could cause damage. If this is the case, than the problem you and I experienced could start at it not getting past 99%. It's charged, but the battery won't believe that it is, causing further damage to itself.

Or perhaps the battery isn't to blame? Could the laptop unit itself be the problem? It seems rather... unlucky... to get a replacement battery with the same "uncommon" defect. You and I got the bad end of unlikely odds, Asus sells faulty batteries, or the laptop itself caused the damage to begin with.

Anyway, thanks for your post! I'll be contacting Asus tech support on Monday to get this taken care of. I really can't function without my laptop and your story about a quick response gives me hope. Your story about a second "faulty" battery causes me trepidation.

 

This is an old thread, but I’m bumping it up as I’m having similar problem and I didn’t find a solution except someone suggesting removing battery out for a second (which didn't work for me).

I had my V6 for less than 6 months and I hardly ever use it on the battery, but my battery meter recently never goes beyond 70% (currently at 67%), plus the light never goes out. Is a bad battery and shall I replace it ? Thanks,

dlogic

 

Thanks for your posts eilredah and dlogic. I'm glad (in a twisted sort of way) that I am not the only one to experience this. I'm still using my 2nd battery and the light is no longer always on, though it still comes on periodically while on AC power. I didn't do anything special to get my 1% back, it just happened! However, I am still expecting the maximum charge percent to plummet soon, as it did with battery #1 when I started seeing the battery light turn on and off.

Anyways, dlogic, you should contact ASUS via phone (ignore their crappy website tech support) and get a new battery. It's pretty easy, use their FedEx account and it doesn't cost a thing (in Canada, anyways).

eilredah, keep me posted on what you find out and I hope your 2nd battery works out better than mine!

 

I had the exact same problem with my v6v battery.
Asus replaced it with no grief whatsoever.
I just got a new one today.