MSI GT73VR-7RF Shuts down when unplugged from AC adapter

Hello everyone,

This issue started happening from the day I bought it.
It has been bothering me all the time to the point where I can't stand this laptop anymore.

Whenever I would work on my laptop for a few hours it would die but only when I unplug the AC adapter to leave somewhere. One night I closed the lid and unplugged the AC adapter to put the laptop in the bag for the next day. I took a sneak peek on the side of the power button hibernation light and unplugged AC, and that's when the light turned off. However, right now I'm typing without AC adapter and it works... this is so random.

When I unplug AC adapter there's no delay it shuts off instantly and forget all my previous settings in dragon center and also forgets all my steam games so I have to re-download them again even though they are on the hard disk already.

It's weird every single time I re-flash the BIOS it works for few days and starts to happen again.
Am I supposed to calibrate the battery every week?

I can't send the laptop for repair because I'm leaving to Europe in a week.

Videos of other people having the same issue:

 

You are not supposed to calibrate your battery every week, nor need to reflash BIOS or anything so often. Right now try loading setup defaults in BIOS, save/shutdown and restart to get the BIOS in "order".

You should probably start an RMA process if you can consistently cause the laptop to fail in such a way. I don't normally unplug my machine while ON unless I am moving from a quick location, but I have never experienced such a situation.

Maybe you should try disabling hibernation too?

 

Instead of doing an RMA, try this first:

Open the laptop with the 5 bolts unscrewed and remove the bottom panel.
Then find the battery cable connector and unplug it.

With the cable unplugged, take a paperclip and press down in the small pin hole for 45 seconds (you can have the AC adapter plugged in for this). If you can't find the pin hole (should be by one of the underside speaker grills), just look at the back cover.

Then plug the battery connector back on firmly and test.

Does this fix the problem?

If it did then the battery connector was not seated properly.

 

I already tried everything... if the battery connector wasn't seated properly it wouldn't work at all sometimes... this is very random. Once I unplug it won't turn on with plugging AC adapter back in... any ideas?

 

Did you try disabling hibernation/fast boot as ryzeki suggested?

disable it from control panel > power options > Choose what the power button does

then launch command prompt as admin and type:

powercfg -h off

then hit the enter button

then reboot and test again

 

We already did that a while ago together... and I just did it again.
However, no luck whenever I unplug the laptop it dies, and sometimes doesn't or just dies after 5 minutes without notice and can't power on again.

 

@RalfTech

Try this bro:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...itan-pro-drivers.800622/page-25#post-10540944

 

It's updated bro... I guess I'll have to deal with it the whole summer till I get back

 

Sorry to hear your issues continue. It does seem like a hardware problem. If nothing has worked so far, I do suggest setting up RMA at the soonest possible time for you.

 

When the battery is defective, it can report false information to the system but in reality the battery has lesser capacity to disperse than the reported information therefore causing it to shut off when its actual power is depleted. It's best to replace it, and avoid doing battery calibration.

 

Would a EC Re-flash or Update help?
After some thinking and battery logs it seems that one cell in the battery is not working at all (faulty from the factory). When it reaches a certain percentage and when it switches to that cell the laptop obviously goes off. I don't see any other reason unless the motherboard is faulty which I assume would be 1 out of a 1000.

What is a EC Chip and what's the purpose of it?

I'm trying to find a new battery to test my theory and let me know what you guys think.

 

Updating EC firmware (embedded controller) will not resolve a defective battery issue. The EC manages the function of power buttons, keyboard control (volume, brightness, etc), power flow, thermal management, etc.

 

Thank you sir.
I now will know what the EC manages.

It seems to me that a battery cell is faulty and there's 8 of them so there's a higher change of one being faulty.
By the way many models from MSI have a 6 cell battery so probably that's why it's less common.

I wish MSI could send me a new battery with fast shipping to Chicago in 5 days before my trip to Europe where I will spend the whole summer but apparently they have a whole process to go through... ugh.

 

No one likes to have their stuff break down on them, not to mention the RMA process after that, but unfortunately things do break down because they can break down. The good part is, at least this happened during warranty period instead of happening after warranty period.

 

I'd at least contact MSI, to see if they'll send you a battery.

 

I'm having the same problem GT73VR 7RE 6mo old and it won't start on battery even with the GPU off. If I pull out the power cord it shuts off. Battery shows 93%. Unfortunatly I can send it off for 2-3 weeks for repair. Any suggestions would help.
Thanks

 

Your battery is within warranty, so you can contact MSI to see if you can do warranty exchange for battery only.

 

I'm having the exaaaaaaaact same problem. Laptop cuts power on battery randomly. And the battery callibration keeps resetting from 20mins remaining to 30 mins for as long as i run the callibration program. Did you solve the issue?

 

Contact MSI because they gotta replace the battery.

 

I'll do that. But I still find it weird since i was finally successful in callibrating the battery after leaving it for 6 hours or so. But the laptop even cuts power even when its in stanby/sleep or complete shut down state. I'm panicking because I don't want it to be a mobo Charging circuit issue. Was it the battery for your case?

 

Since the battery is defective, it had gone beyond from calibration can do. Although I wouldn't recommend the tool because it causes more wear and tear to your battery.

 

Thankyou. I'll send it off as soon as i complete my work in a few days. I'll still be fishing for reasons why it does the cut off even when laptop is powered off. just to make sure it really is only the battery and not some faulty power drain circuit on the mobo or bad connections. though i've waved and jumped around with the laptop ac plugged and it didn't shut off so it might not be any loose connections.

 

Here's an example, if the battery's actual capacity is 40% but reporting 50% to the system, so when it comes down to 11% remaining on the system, then the next stage is immediate shut down due to loss of power.

 

yes. But what if the battery charge % doesn't matter at all. For me its cutting power from 0-100% charge remaining. its like it doesn't even depend on the charge % at all. even if its 100% charge in a shut down state it still cuts power when its not even being drained of power.

 

What about DC jack? Does it feel loose if you wiggle it gently?
It still can be battery issue, but if it's not then it's either the DC jack, or the internal power board.

 

and at other times i even have put it through the entire % age upto 5% left with full high speed fans and gpu and cpu 100% age usage and it still didn't cut power. So the drain on the battery doesn't feel like the problem to me. then again i don't know how a faulty battery behaves.

 

How long have you had the system?

 

The dc jack doesn't seem loose. and i can't open the back cuz its under warranty to check the battery connections. It runs great on ac power.

 

i bought it last october. its a gt73vr 7RF

 

I see, it's best to let MSI inspect and repair the system through warranty then, good luck.

 

I'd like your input on this please as you've posted the same problem as mine for the same system. How'd it go then? what was the issue

 

somehow the laptop performs well under 40% charge. And above that it can shut down with the amount of power down instances increasing as the charge percentage increases. It can be triggered by anything. even a movement of the screen lid (no sleep setting in power options), unsleeping the laptop or vice versa or just simply lying shut off in a bag at full charge. This troubleshooting is way beyond my knowledge.