W3V Second Battery Problem

Hi

When I use the second battery in the travellers drawer, the laptop shutsdown without any warning once the battery is dead. I've had a look in Control Panel but cant find any settings which control the second battery options.

The main battery gives no problems if it is used by itself.

Can anybody help?

Cheers

Jay

 

I didn't get a second battery, I remember it said optional 2nd battery, but I never found an option to check. I got a little traveller drawer though. Even though I'll probably never use it

 

In the control panel, what are two batteries showing up under the battery control piece? Also, did did you uninstall anything that came on the system?

 

Just curious is that with both batteries in place or just the one in the media drive? Can you also tell me how many cells the media battery has, i am interested in one for myself but have been unable to find the specs on the second battery. Thanks

 

The main battery is 8-cell and the modular is 6-cell. With both the notebook can last 5 hours easly, 7 is streching. I was able to use either battery as the only battery in the system.

 

Justin, I did do a clean install when I got the machine so I dont know if any additional software was installed for the second battery. The batteries come up as number 1 and number 2 in the control panel with no names for the batteries.

pygo, I'm not sure how many cell it is but I thought it was four. I get an average of 6 1/2 hours with Power4gear and easily over 7 hours with RM Utility. The second battery changes the way you work and play on airplanes. The extra battery life rocks. Say goodbye to constant charging.

I still have the problem though, wheather I use any battery saving software or not. Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully someone knows a workaround.

Jay

 

Make sure all of the drivers are installed... especially the ATKACPI Driver.... that controls a LOT.

 

Just to clarify the abrupt shutdowns occur when you use both batteries together or when you are using only the media batttery?

Can we reach a consensus for the battery? Is it 4 cell or is it 6 cell?

Thanks

 

There was never a need for a consensus....... all of Asus' optical bay batteries in the last 2+ years have been 6 cell.

The batteries do and should work together... that's the whole point. This has always been one of my most liked features, as I travel a lot.... I think the deletion of those drivers was probably the source of the problem.

 

I checked in device manager and I do have the ATA0100 ACPI Utility installed. I uninstalled it and then re-installed but it hasn't resolved the problem.

Any further ideas would be appreciated. This problem does spoil an otherwise outstanding laptop.

Cheers

 

I'm using the 2 batteries and don't have a problem when the bay battery is 0% and switches to the main battery. But I'm using the original OS installation. If it's possible, you could restore to the original installation, and see if you still have problems to rule out the software problems.

 

i'm having the same problem using the two batteries simultaneously. after the bay battery gets down to 0%, the laptop just dies. it will not boot up again unless i take out both batteries. i haven't changed installed/uninstalled any drivers or made any modifications to the system. this behavior happens 50% of the time only, so sometimes, when the bay battery runs down to 0%, windows switches correctly to the primary battery. has anyone been able to find a resolution to this issue? currently, I just take out the bay battery when it's down to 5%, but this is quite annoying, so any help would be appreciated. does anyone think that this is bios related, and not windows driver related?

 

I have both batteries installed and don't have any problems. I also completely reformatted the system and didn't install any of the Asus utilities, except for the ATA driver and the unofficial version of HControl (I use CHC). Using the ATI Omega drivers, battery management functions normally and I don't notice when the secondary bay battery is drained.

However, the hibernate function hardly ever works (nine times out of ten it will just hang at the 'resuming windows' screen when the progress bar reaches the maximum point), so it's not completely without ACPI issues.

To get your battery working properly, you might like to try reinstalling the chipset/INF drivers, which are necessary for ACPI. Failing that, you may have a defective secondary bay battery or internal power supply. I'm not really sure, though.

 

Yeah, I've got this same problem, too. 2nd battery gets to zero then laptop dies and the only way to revive is by removing all the batteries. Something to do with a CHC program will solve this? Its really annoying and I've stopped using the 2nd battery because of it. Anyone have more details?