Help needed on battery wear

I have a dv5 which was purchased less than an year back. The battery has indicates a wear of 73% and last less than 30 mins. This occured a few days after updating to bios F21. What should i do? Any help would be much appreciated.

Tried calibrating, doesn't help.

 

If you kept the battery inside the laptop when you were operating on mains power, the wear you are seeing is normal.

Too bad no owner's manual tells this, but keeping batts in on mains power generates heat, and heat kills batts quick. You're gonna need a new battery.

 

You should be able to get it replaced under warranty. Install HP Support Assistance and run a battery check. If a warranty id comes up you can call HP and they will replace it (this just happened to me )

 

Mmh, so you got your batt replaced dannyres? Well, it seems like i'm the only one who didn't need a warranty call... Except that i don't actually have a warranty.

 

thank you for your replies. Just need to figure if they ship outside america.

 

i have the same problem, had to go though live chat for 1 hour, fed up i asked for a manager and the floor supervisor escalated my case to a case manager, they going to call 2morrow

still ridiculous tho, im under warranty they should just replace my battery for me

 

Yeah I got mine replaced.. should arrive tomorrow morning. HP have international warranty as far as I know so they should ship outside the states..

 

Did you get a warranty ID # from the HP Battery Check tool? I had no issues getting mine replaced once I told them the warranty ID #..

 

According to my last chat/call with HP, batteries are "consumable products" so they are not covered by warranty. That is pretty lame

 

You must have got stuck with a crap rep. The HP tool specifically states to call HP for warranty service options if the battery is over their "really bad, must be faulty" threshold. I suggest calling again and speaking to a new person and starting over. Again have you actually run the HP Battery check tool? If so what is its output?

 

It says good, but the machine shuts off after 45 minutes, i have tested with a mutimeter and the battery has very low to no voltage when it is dead, so its not a calibration thing, they checked my number and did tell me i was under warranty but because the hp software says its good they wont replace it for me

 

Try letting the battery die and re-running the test while it is still at or close to 0% (pop the battery back in just before you start the test). The tool seems to have a pretty high threshold (obviously so HP can say the batteries are not faulty to save money). Running it at 0% seems to make it see a fault more easily.

EDIT: Also try going to the path C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Logs and see if there is a file called HealthCheckBC.xml.

 

thanks for your effort dannyres, i have to go to sleep for school tomorrow but i will try this after school tomorrow

 

Basically HP's rule is unless you can get the battery check utility to display that your battery is FAULTY then they will not replace under warranty. This is what my warranty states:

Note they only cover faulty batteries. If you can convince the HP Battery Check tool that your battery is faulty then the tool will show a warranty id number. Then you can call HP and they have to replace your battery, assuming you are still in the first year of your warranty. For me it was easy but it really depends on who you get to speak to I suppose!

If you're sure your battery is faulty and the tool thinks otherwise just try it at different times. I had particular success when I drained the battery and then ran the tool while it was still appearing as 0% in Windows. For me the tool sometimes says my battery is perfect, sometimes low and sometimes faulty. Regardless of what the tool spits out you can find all the juicy details in the xml file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard\HP Support Framework\Logs\HealthCheckBC.xml

Obviously omit the (x86) if you are running a 32bit OS. This is assuming also that you are running the latest version of HP Support Assistant. Note that in that file there is actually a warranty ID number regardless of the result of the test. From my experience the second to last section of this number (5 digits) changes depending on the result of the test (pass, fail, etc) so there is no point trying to call HP with this number unless your battery is actually faulty.. besides that would be illegal, I am just posting this for imformational purposes.

 

This is an example of what the HealthCheckBC.xml looks like:

HTML:

  <?xml version="1.0" ?> 
- <HC_BCheck Generated="9/11/2009 6:47:52 p.m.">
- <Battery>
  <HealthStatus SerialNumber="XXXXXXXXXX">Test Passed</HealthStatus> 
  <TestResult>101</TestResult> 
  <DesignCapacity>4400</DesignCapacity> 
  <FullChargeCapacity>2648</FullChargeCapacity> 
  <RemainingCapacity>2646</RemainingCapacity> 
  <StorageCapacity>63.1578947368421</StorageCapacity> 
  <MaxError>1</MaxError> 
  <CycleCount>430</CycleCount> 
  <Temperature>38</Temperature> 
  <TerminalVoltage>12440</TerminalVoltage> 
  <Current>0</Current> 
  <DesignVoltage>10800</DesignVoltage> 
  <BatteryManufactureName>DP-SAN44</BatteryManufactureName> 
  <Status>16608</Status> 
  <CellVoltage1>4175</CellVoltage1> 
  <CellVoltage2>4133</CellVoltage2> 
  <CellVoltage3>4132</CellVoltage3> 
  <CellVoltage4>0</CellVoltage4> 
  <BatteryACPower>1</BatteryACPower> 
  <BatterySupportedCount>1</BatterySupportedCount> 
  <SerialNumber>9335</SerialNumber> 
  <satId>9335</satId> 
  <ManufactureDate /> 
  <Source>1</Source> 
  [TABLE]0[/TABLE] 
  <SubTable>0</SubTable> 
  <InWarranty>True</InWarranty> 
  <WarrantyID>XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XX</WarrantyID> 
  </Battery>
  </HC_BCheck>

Obviously the important parts are the WarrantyID number at the bottom there which I have replaced with X's and the FullChargeCapacity and DesignedCapacity sections.

 

I called up HP and they told me that it's still under warranty and could possibly be replaced. Well hopefully i'll get a replacement. Batteries are indeed covered (according to HP) for 1 year. Thanks' for the feedback guys...

 

the case manager was very helpful and sent me a replacement with the shipping labels for shipping it back

thanks for the help guys

 

on a side note.... here in australia.....HP does not require the customer to post back the batteries

so i kept the first one (36% wear), they sent a 2nd one which wore out to 7% in 2 weeks...i get upset, call them up and say what in the @#%#%@#$%..... incidentally they had sent me a wrong part (despite it connects and works) they send me a third one...which has the right number etc...so essentially I run the HP on a 15Cell capacity ...... no not really.... wearing out the 1st one to death and then get onto the others.....

 

I actually did this also a couple of years back. The HP Battery Check software indicated a Bad Battery and gave a cause ID#. I called HP, gave them the ID#, and without issue they expressed a new battery and a box to send the old battery back.

 

Yeah I think the vast majority of people complaining that HP wont give them a new battery don't actually have a battery that fails the test. If it doesn't fail the test you don't get a new battery..seems fair to me. They explicitly say in their warranty that battery life is NOT warrantied.

 

Is there a way to check the battery without having to download any additional programs or apps?

 

Not unless your battery has a power gauge built-in , some give a wear level if you hold the battery check button for 10 seconds or so.

 

Just found the answer myself --- I didn't realize that HP has a built-in HP Battery Check. So, the good news is that my battery passed the test with a rating of "good" (apparently their top rating, even though I could swear I've lost some battery life during the last 11 months that I've had the laptop)! But the bad news is that I guess I won't be getting a new battery from HP right before my one year generic warranty runs out.

 

hey guys, after a long wait i got a replacement battery.

btw, do i need to charge the new battery for like 6 hours or more before i use it for the first time?

 

That's what HP told me but I don't actually know the science behind it.. I've heard varying things online but I think it's safe to say it wont do any harm (as long as you don't charge it for a REALLY long time like 24hours)..

 

Hmm may be around 6 hours would suffice i think.

 

You just need to charge till the charging light show the battery is full.