CF-29 Red Charge Light

Alright so I've been using my cf-29 for a few months now and have had no problems with the battery. I would regularly get 5 to 7 hours out of the battery. Then all the sudden one day when i plugged it in the charge indicator light turned red after being the usual orange for a moment. Now when i power it up off of the ac power it immediately shuts down as if the battery was dead and when I power it up on ac power with the battery in it says the battery is at 0%. However it did work the first time off of wall power, the battery said it had seven minutes left yet lasted five hours. This all started a few days after I upgraded the RAM if that could have any thing to do with it. It has also been having problems with service host running the processor at 100% after a full windows re-install, however that started around a month before the problem started. If anyone has a solution it would be much obliged. (P.S., I only have $40 into this computer and am only willing to spend a very little amount of money on the fix, however I have ample time to work on it.)

 

My guess your battery is dead. When you loaded windows a month ago did you install the "Battery Recalibration Application" , if so try running that and see what happens.

 

Your battery need a replacement. Its on the retirement stage.

ohlip

Blair! Iguessed we are answering almost at the same time, Lol...

 

If you're running XP one of the updates from Microsoft might be the cause of the 100% CPU svchost.exe issue. I had the same thing, so did lots of people. Try Google for which update was responsible, I've forgotten.

Edit: found it. I think the fix is KB 2879017

 

Toughbook batteries, most of them anyway, have a chip in there to tell the battery when to shut down. Even though the cells might be good (or barely good) it will shut it down or limit charging. Panasonic doesn't want exploding batteries so they program a shelf life into them. Some of the older ones didn't have this so they can be re-celled.

To re-cell a battery now you would need a program to talk to the chip and rewrite it. Something nobody has been able to do as far as I know.

 

My CF29 batt calibrate process can be run if you press F9 (I think its F9 or one of the F keys) while the system is POSTing. I don't have the Panasonic cal utility installed in Windows. In any cased, I would guess the battery is shot beyond repair.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I did notice something when i just was going to power it up, the charge indicator is the proper orange until the moment windows starts to boot. Does anyone know if there is a special driver for the battery. When i re-installed windows I didn't use a tough book disc. (The disc I used was an enterprise edition of Windows XP Pro gold.) Not sure If this could have something to do with it.

 

Try leaving it plugged in and charging without booting the computer.
Leave it this way for a couple hours and see what happens.
See if the light changes from orange to green.
What is the voltage and amperage of your power supply?

Create a Ubuntu, live cd. version 10.10 preferred. Boot to that and see what the battery indicators say.

 

Are you using a Panasonic charger or one of them cheap China chargers ?

 

I used a retail version of XP Pro on my 29 with no problems. Never bothered with the factory disk. I did use the Japan support site for drivers but I don't recall any battery or charging driver. I'm sure there are other batt % utilities but with XP I always used Mobile Meter. Its kind of obscure now days but you can get it from Softpedia.

 

It's not really a driver but a program (brecal_29_3_d040711.exe [1.16 mb]) http://pc-dl.panasonic.co.jp/dl/download/file/003383/s/acee05ffec76eaa5/brecal_29_3_d040711.exe . This is for the CF29MK3.

 

Some time ago I did some EEPROM flashing on power drills battery packs. This site info is something I bookmarked at the time. I think it will get someone heading in the right direction. But I have never did a laptop battery....

The software and my home built hardware I sold/gave to a young man that I worked with that was going to set the world on fire with it. I think he did rebuild batteries for a few months and quit.

Smart Battery Workshop

Frequently Asked Questions about Rechargeable Batteries

 

There is no battery driver.... But there is a "Brecal" program as Blair mentioned. It is used to exercise the battery as most stay plugged in all the time and aren't used like they should be. You can activate this either upon boot-up by pressing the F9 key or by logging into windows and then going to Panasonic/Battery Recalibration. It will shut the laptop down and then enter the recalibration routine. If you do it too often... It will tell you, "Do you really want to do this? Your last recalibration was on xx/xx/xx." For a new-to-you laptop I would do it a few times... Or definitely if you suspect a bad battery. The recalibration won't go through with a bad battery... It will hang and you will get the flashing red light as you are now.

The recalibration does several things for you but it also gives you a more accurate "Time Remaining" when you hover over your battery icon in the system tray.

Blair also brought up another good question... Are you using an OEM AC adapter? It shouldn't matter that much if it is the correct type. But the Chinese adapters are terrible and just because it has the right plug doesn't make it the correct voltage or amperage.

Look in the BIOS and find "Environment"... It is usually set for AUTO... Your choices are NORMAL and HIGH TEMPERATURE. Normal is obviously for normal use. But the High Temp setting will throttle your battery charge so it only goes to 80% charge to protect it from overcharging. AUTO will allow it to figure it out on its own.

I bought all the stuff to make a battery tab spot welder... A 12V charger, a huge capacitor and a few other things including copper welding tips and a foot switch... It works great on power tools, radios, iPod speakers and the like. But as I mentioned before... You may be able to rewire older models of Toughbook battery but the CF-28/29/30, etc. are not rebuildable.

 

Alright as far as the adapter goes its a model no. CF29ACR78-AC1. Its output is 15.6 volts at 5 amps. I have no clue if its is a real Panasonic one as I was not to original owner of the computer. The battery is a yellow tabbed 11.1 volt one. (Its currently in the computer so I cant read the rest of the info.) I just put it on the recalibration from start up. It said it had 11% and had to charge so I am letting it, although its flashing red still but appears to be charging. The reason I asked about the driver is that the computer, since the reinstall of Windows, hasn't been able to find all its hardware. Like the speaker in the bottom, the Ethernet input, or the function button inputs. I'll write back when the calibration is over.
Edit: Calibration failed it just stopped advancing after a few hours around the 15% mark.

 

Your battery is toast if it is flashing red... I don't recognize the model number of the AC adapter but the volts/amps is correct. Does it have the Panasonic name on it?

It sounds like you are either missing drivers, have the wrong ones installed or they didn't install correctly. The hotkey driver isn't installed if your Fn keys aren't working.

 

This is what the Panasonic charger will look like

 

CF29ACR78-AC1 is an aftermarket charger.

 

And I thought we were obsessive/geeks for hot rodding Toughbooks....

Modified Power Wheels Information

 

Wait until I post a link for my next auction... Talk about obsessive! All new HTML code and pics...

 

That site is where I got the info and modded two power wheels for the kids, lol. One is still slated for a 4 x 4 conversion on 18 volts. They will take 24 volts but it puts a lot of stress on the plastic gears.

 

Wondering if you ever got things working properly??? I can send you a used battery and charger to try if you would like...as always, just trying to help...

 

Well, I finally gave up on the battery. Its definitely shot. On the bright side I managed to fix the svchost problem, so the system works at least. Gives me another reason to hate Internet Explorer, the root of all evil.

 

With Windows XP dying out a lot of it is Windows Update, but glad you fixed it.

I had a battery do the exact same thing on my CF-28. Ran fine, plugged it in and it just died. I was able to look at the voltage and it said 12.228V which was normal but I guess either the battery tripped a fuse (if it has one?) or that one of the cells dropped below nominal and the pack was disabled to prevent detonation.