Laptop battery is fully charged but remains @ 0%

Hello All,

I have a rather unique problem that I have not been able to find anywhere on the net. I have an aftermarket battery for my Toshiba A205 S7464. It has been running fine for the past three months and has given me no issues until recently. The other day, I started noticing that my percentage for the battery was going a little haywire. The battery would be fully charged and could last all the way to capacity (about 3 hours), but windows would never recognize that it had more than 13%. As I started running it off battery , the percentage would go down, but never up when charging. At this point, the percentage charge windows says it has is 0%, and I cannot turn on the laptop without it first being connected to power, or wake it up from hibernation. After it boots, however, I can use it on battery. It's just a hassle not knowing when the battery will die and not being able to turn the blasted thing on! Anybody have any ideas? Thanks in Advance!

 

Note, it is windows 7.

 

DL Everest and see what it reports on battery. Have the battery inside when booting for windows to recognize the battery properly.

 

Everest is giving me "0% low level, charging"
Battery life is unknown.

 

Miraculously, I'm not sure how, I didn't do anything different, but it is now charging! Not to say it didn't have the charge, but windows is now recognizing it! Still, any ideas on what this phenomenon may be?

 

It sounds like the power management circuitry of your battery may be borked. The question then becomes whether the power management circuitry itself can tell what the charge level is at, and merely fails to report it properly to windows, or if it can't itself tell the charge level of the battery, and just reports to windows what it knows (which is nothing). The first case is annoying, but not dangerous in and of itself. The battery will stop charging when it reaches full (which probably means that your battery will be listed at 0% and not charging... or that there's not a battery there), and will not let the battery discharge past an unsafe point.

The second situation is potentially very dangerous, as if the power management circuitry in your battery cannot tell if it is fully charged, it may allow for overcharging of your battery, which can lead to fire and explosion (in extreme cases). It can also allow for overly deep discharges, which will end up damaging the battery.

 

have you tried to calibrate the battery?

 

Neither sound very great, but I do believe it has regressed back to the point of not charging, but anyway, how does one calibrate said battery?

 

Battery calibration fixes the fact that oftentimes, a series of small discharges followed by recharges (such as usually happens when you run almost exclusively off mains and unplug the machine when it's turned off, which means the battery drains a little power from the battery while off to maintain CMOS battery, settings, etc, and then recharges a little when plugged in) will make the charge meter (or gas/fuel gauge, as it's often called) read incorectly, so the charge level reported is different than the actual charge level. In my experience, however, the charge level will still go up and down while charging/discharging, it just wouldn't match the actual power levels. However, to calibrate your battery, charge it to full, and then fully discharge your battery (set your power settings so that your computer will not shutoff at critical battery levels or anything, unplug it, and then just keep running until it literally shuts off from lack of power). Then do a full recharge, and your battery should be calibrated.

It may also help to take a quick look through the Battery Guide in the sticky, or for the lazy, here ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91846).

 

How about the latest HWMonitor that shows what the capacity is?
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php