FlexiCharger the cause of unplugging from AC = insta-death?

Hello, all.

I just have a question. Since I got this computer (about a year now), I had it RMA'd for a hardware fault with the GPU (this was fixed about 8 months ago). Since then, I've not had any issues worth mentioning.

Today, I decided to look into an odd phenomenon that has started happening or perhaps was already happening and I just never noticed it much (I took apart the whole computer to check). On a side note, I noticed that since the RMA they GLUED the rear panel with plastic pieces and then glued those pieces to the screws that hold the mobo to the chassis itself. Really weird for Clevo to do this. It's almost as though it's not the same computer anymore (not to mention that these plastic pieces partially block some of the vents underneath--the effect of which is negligible I'm thinking). When I went to take the panel apart, it cost me not only a cracked panel (just cracked where the power plug goes) but also several cuts/bleeds on my fingers because of how difficult it was (it took me what felt like two hours). Anyway, computer runs fine as it is and all is clean and nice inside.

So, why'd I take it apart? Because I noticed something that's odd, and I think it's an issue caused by the FlexiCharger feature. First, my battery probably has a cumulative used life of about an hour or two on it since I got the computer a year ago. Also, FlexiCharger has been set between 40 and 60%. Right now it's showing 88% on the battery and not charging (the percentage is likely a lie).

Now, if I unplug my computer from A/C power, the thing instantly shuts off. Is this because it's not calibrated anymore or something? Has a brand new battery gone defective from being on FlexiCharger mode for this long? It is detected by the system (I tried taking it out and yes, it showed that it wasn't there when I did that). Any ideas what's up?

I do recall that once I ended up finding that my computer died really fast and I couldn't boot it up when the battery was dead (this happened in February). After keeping it charged for about 5-10 mins, it then worked.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I attached the power report from the command prompt as a jpeg. Please see that.

 

Hey, I actually had this happen to my computer recently, which is a similar model to yours (I also have a battery report generated, the system name is also Notebook P95_96_97Ex,Rx. Mine is actually a P960ED.)

For me, I also have my laptop charging almost all the time, use Flexicharger, and set it to charge at 40% and stop at 60%. I have been running Folding@Home since mid-March so it's been on and running the GPU for 12-16 hours per day for the last 3.5 months. I have noticed the battery percentage would be a bit higher than the stop charge limit but I don't think it's a big deal. I have unplug it from time to time, mainly to move it out of my room so I can sleep and it would finish folding a work unit and shutdown when finished.

Two weeks ago around the time I made the battery report (which isn't as detailed as yours), I noticed when I unplug my computer and then run Throttlestop Bench the computer would suddenly shut down. I thought the battery was failing at first. Fortunately it wasn't, I just had to turn off Flexicharger and then let it charge which took 2.5 - 3 hours for the charge LED to go green. After that I went ahead and drained the battery and charge it to full a second time (after the first charge it didn't suddenly turn off on me). Last week I let my laptop download a game and went from 96% to 68% where it's been since.

The instruction manual recommends to drain the battery every 3 months when using Flexicharger. I think it's better to charge to full to ensure it's calibrated

 

Windows will learn the flexicharge percentage as 100% so with such a low percentage that could cause off behaviour.

 

Woo, someone else who had this issue besides me. And a similar model, too, yeah! That's excellent to know. This was really enlightening because I was freaking out for a while there, haha. I didn't know it had to be drained every few months. In that case I'll do that next time I shut it off. Thanks so much!!

Ah, really? I had no idea Windows does that. That certainly explains why the percentages keep creeping up.

Thanks to both of you, again!

 

It's why the flexicharge is BIOS controlled as windows does not really expose that side of things IIRC.

 

What do you mean by that? Operating system software has no access to low-level stuff like that? How come?

 

Battery control in the OS is not really exposed as far as I understand from Microsoft, probably partly for security.

 

Oh, so it's intentional? I see.

I wonder if Linux can do it? Probably not, either. "Intentional," right?

Thanks for explaining. Good to know.

 

It would have its own battery management, it could vary distro to distro.

 

I see. Didn't know that. Thought it would be like Windows. Thanks for the explanation as always.

 

It's the software part, there will be standard firmware hooks for that sort of thing.

 

Wait, are you saying that it's safer to do it on Linux than Windows? That's why there's no firmware hook for it?

 

There will be standard hooks the OS used but it will be protected and it will be down to the OS what kind of control there is over it.

 

Ah, so it depends on the OS and it exists in both Windows and Linux then? Fascinating. I guess Windows is natively less secure, explaining why it's not available.

Funny thing now... my battery is showing 100%. I'd bet a $1000 that if I unplug my A/C power that the computer will instantly shut off. I'm scared to try, though--lots of things in background running on this Clevo laptop.

 

It's simply more targeted than a lot of other OSs also.

 

Figures. I love how Mac users say "Oh, no, my computer never gets viruses." Lol. Only reason you're avoiding them is because programmers don't want to spend time on the 5% or so of the world that does use Mac.

Good answer. I "liek" it

 

Well all macs are just turning into large phones soon.

 

Lol. What makes you say that?

 

ARM CPU and maybe touch screen coming to a Macbook soon.

 

Is that the only reason? That's not really what makes a mobile phone a mobile phone, is it?

 

Yes Apple are moving to ARM based CPUs so you can bet the current models are going to be dropped like a rock for support and the walled garden app store will become more prolific on the desktop side.

 

Why would it be a walled garden with ARM CPUs? Can't normal programs run on ARM?

 

Apple are quite keen to have everything go through their store to take "their" cut.

 

Nice. Well, this is why I don't like Apple and never will. They figuratively rob their customer base with an expensive, although decent, product to teach them to be addicted to the company. Yuck. I always get criticized for talking crap about Apple, but I think it's deserved. I much rather be on Microsoft's side. It's the lesser of two evils!

 

I suggest pointing people to Louis Rossman's videos if they want evidence about what Apple does.