Li-I Battery discharge problem

I just got a fairly old laptop (probably the issue) that has a battery issue I haven't encountered before.

The RightMark utility will show the battery at 99% with a capacity of 58,000-ish mwH, with a discharge rate of 27,000 mwH...so about 2.5 hours of life.

Once it gets to about 93%, all of the sudden the capacity reads as 6000 mwH and I have about 5 minutes until the computer shuts down.

What causes the sudden near full discharge? any work arounds? Time for a new battery?

The funny thing is, it charges at a slow, constant pace without any jumping.

Thanks for any advice.

 

The battery is dead.
You'll have to get a new one.

 

Yeah, sounds like the battery is dead. You can try to recalibrate it, so that it will at least report its capacity more accurately, but actually, running it all the way down to zero and then charging it back to 100% should have already done that.

As an aside... if the laptop is really old, it may be hard to find a replacement pack, but you may be able to find companies that will rebuild your current pack for you. They open it up, remove the dead cells, and replace them with fresh cells. I've rebuilt 4 of my packs myself; if you're good with a soldering iron it's not a big deal. As a side benefit, cells you can buy today have higher capacities than a few years ago, so you'll get longer runtimes as well.

 

Thanks for the replies...do you happen to know the average cost of a professional rebuild vs. do-it-yourself?