Is the battery charge indicator suppose to be always on with AC power? [W3V]

So I am slightly apprehensive after having my 2-year-old W3V battery go from 3+ hours of maximum battery life to 20 minutes in a span of several weeks, and after having just spent $100 US on a replacement...

My replacement arrived today and, after fully charging it for several hours, I noticed that the battery charge indicator stays on. Is the indicator suppose to stay on, even though the battery is fully charged and the AC is connected?

If my memory serves me correctly, in the past when my previous battery was fresh[er], the indicator would turn off once the battery was fully charged and the AC was connected, and the manual says that this is what should happen.

• Should I be worried?
• If this is a problem, could it have caused my previous battery to wear so rapidly?
• Do I need to install a specific driver or fix so that the battery charge indicator functions as expected?
• Could using [edit] NHC, instead of Power4 Gear, be causing this?
  ([edit] NHC does recognize when the AC is connected and when the battery is 100% charged, but even at 100%, it still says it is charging and the battery charge indicator is remains on.)

Please, any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Mines stays on but I think it changes color. From orange when charging to Green when done.

 

It's not a good at all, the LED should be turned off after the battery is fully charged (meaning no more current is fed into the battery).

Try stopping / disabling / uninstalling all ACPI-related software (like NPC whatever that is ) and see if the problem still happens. If it doesn't, then one of the disabled programs is to blame.

You can use MobileMeter to check the current flowing into your battery, that one is pretty safe (it doesn't tinker with stuff it only reads characteristics).

You can also use a live linux CD to boot Linux and see if the same thing happens there. In that way, you will see if it's a driver/software issue, or a hardware/firmware problem.

Edit: you can also try reseating the battery / checking if the contacts are clean.

 

Means your battery is slightly bad..... it doesn't mean Asus will replace it, because they usually base that on the percentage of a charge it'll take..... but they may if you ask them.

But as EBE said about... reseat it.. check the contacts... do these things first.

 

Sorry. I meant Notebook Hardware Control. NHC does detect current flow into the battery even at 100%. Where can I find a Live Linux CD? The contacts on my notebook and my battery appear clean. What exactly do you mean by "reseating?"

Are you saying that the replacement battery I just bought from Asus is bad? This also happens with my old battery.

 

For linux, just google for knoppix and burn the latest version that should do it.

Reseating = just taking it out and putting it in again.

You could also check if you have the latest BIOS for the machine...

 

If it's happening with both batteries, I'd want to look at the motherboard - but there is a chance it is both batteries.... the chance of both batteries doing this though just brought the probability way down.

 

I'm no ACPI pro but if you still get the charge light in Linux, you may want to flash the BIOS since it is the intermediate controller between the OS and the actual hardware... I think. Could I get a confirmation on that?

~ Brett

 

I found the problem. The ATK0100 ACPI Utility driver V1042.2.15.63, available on Asus' website, was causing the problem. Installing V1043.2.15.45 from my W3V Driver/Utility CD corrects the issue.

Thanks for all your help!