Toshiba Satellite A15 Battery Problem

I've had a toshiba satellite a15-s129 for about three years and recently upgraded the ram and added an intel 2915abg. However, there has been a persistent problem with it.

Whenever the comp switches to battery power, it says that there is full power and it uses it up for however long, could be one minute, could be ten. Windows XP always thinks that there's atleast one and a half hours left on the battery. Sometime or another, it suddenly decides that there's only 3% battery power left. Each time, 3%. And when I plug it back in to charge, it won't charge past 3%.

I'm thinking that it's a loose connection. But I was wondering if anybody out there knows how to repair it, or if I want to use battery power, then I need to buy a new battery.

Why it wouldn't be a loose connection, though, and hints towards a dead battery is that it shows 3% instead of 0%. But that Windows thinks that there's 1:30 or 2:40 left on the battery and that the battery won't charge makes me think that it's a loose connection.

Any ideas would be much apreciated. Thanks to all input.

 

Sounds like your battery at the point at which a replacement is needed.

The Lithium Ion battery that you have seems to barely able to hold a charge.

If you run on straight AC power it should be fine... but the battery seems to have degraded severely.

Its happens more often than people realize.... especially to those that leave it constantly plugged into the AC... causing the battery to wear out due to overcharging.

But for 3 years, you are one of the fortunate ones to have a battery last that long... most people now barely have a battery last a year to 1.5 years... due to careless overcharging.

 

Gophn, thanks a lot for your help. After some more testing, I was coming to the same conclusion. The only thing that threw me off was that the Windows power controller (Toshiba Control Center) seemed to think that there was a lot of juice left in it.

Off to spend countless dollars on over-upgrading older notebooks...

 

its not the Windows power controller.... its the damaged (worned down) battery that is causing a mis-reading of power... since it cant hold a correct charge.

 

Aren't the batteries suppose to stop charging when they are full? or is the just he new ones?

 

They only stop charging momentarily to discharge a few percents until the battery is around 90-95%... then it charges again.

Thats not good enough, that would still be considered overcharging.

Of course it would be stopped for a while if the system was shutdown and the power is connected.... until the system starts using up juice again by someone turning on the notebook.

 

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that's true. If it is, then why wouldn't the charging light turn amber to show that it's charging again? And why would the icon in the system tray stay at 100%?