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    Weird battery issues

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by unpolloloco, Dec 13, 2008.

  1. unpolloloco

    unpolloloco Newbie

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    I recently got an inspiron e1505 via ebay auction, and am running to some interesting issues with the included battery (admittedly, it was listed as dead in the auction). Whenever it's installed, windows randomly goes into hard freezes (only resolved by holding the power button to shut down). The BIOS doesn't recognize that a battery's installed (although the computer will charge and run off of the battery - for ~5 mins) With the battery from my late inspiron 1501, everything's fine.

    Anyway, being the good engineering student I am, I cracked open the battery case and took a multimeter across the cell leads and found that on one pair, the voltage was 3.8V, whereas across the other two, the voltage was ~4.05V. To me, this suggests that one of the battery cells probably died. Would this have caused the behavior I am describing, or would it more likely be the charging circuit inside the battery (what I'm thinking it probably is)?

    Thanks in advance for indulging my curiosity!
     
    unpolloloco, Dec 13, 2008
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  2. DetlevCM

    DetlevCM Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    No idea - but you are looking at a faulty battery.

    However - thinking about physics - if the overal voltage is lower, it should drain the battery quicker, so additional components may be broken.
     
    DetlevCM, Dec 13, 2008
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  3. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    The battery needs to be reset.
    What is happening is this.
    The system is reading the battery, and the battery is outputting information saying the battery is not working properly. Instead of just showing the battery as defective, the system continually pings the battery, resulting in the hangs.

    Here is what you can do.
    Since you already have the battery apart, look at the PCB inside the battery. Their are a few microcontrollers on it.
    Physically remove the cells from the pcb with a soldering iron.
    Than short the mircocontroller, thus making it reset.
    After shorting the microcontroller any capacitance will be lost in the chip, so it will reset. (That is if the microcontroller is working properly)
    Than resolder teh cells in and reconnect the battery.
    If the problem still occurs than you need to replace the microcontroller in the battery.
    You can buy a new one on Mouser electronics' website.

    Hopefully simply shorting the microcontroller works for you

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Dec 13, 2008
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