P150HM odd battery state bug

Just recently (i.e. this just started an hour ago) I've been experiencing weird logic errors with my battery that I can only describe as this: the battery always thinks its charging, even when its not. It charges fine when plugged in, but when I unplug it both Windows 7 and BatteryBar say charging, but at a negative rate (which is expected, the battery is discharging). Even when the computer is turned off and plugged in, when I put the battery in, the front lights go orange-orange. The computer starts up just fine without the battery (the lights go off-green), and the battery is charging just fine, I'm just wondering what could be making my laptop think it's always charging. Does anybody have any ideas what would cause this?

Thanks for the help

 

That's most likely caused by the charging port pin getting misaligned and causing a false contact. How this is happening while still allowing you to charge the laptop normally is the confusing part. Could you provide pictures of the charging port and possibly the plug itself?

 

When you switch off the laptop with the charger plugged in, does the blue light on the charger light up? Perhaps a little faintly?

You sound like you're experiencing what I did, especially with the orange orange indicator LED.

My problems mysteriously disappeared on their own after a few days, I didn't do anything about it. Hopefully yours is the same too.

 

Well, this was in the middle of a whole lot of things going wrong. I'm fairly certain now that my A/C adapter has gone bad (judging from the pops I heard from it yesterday), which has messed with the battery. I'm no longer using the A/C adapter, but even when the laptop is unplugged and the battery is in, it still goes orange-orange. I should have seen this coming: the wire that attaches to the A/C adapter box on the computer plug-in side was getting pretty frayed, and my attempts at repair using electrical tape probably wasn't enough to keep it working. Once Malibal's phone system opens in an hour I'm going to order a new A/C adapter and a new battery and hope that fixes it... if not, I'll be back here again.

 

Good luck and please be sure to post if replacing the battery and AC adapter fix your issues or not.

 

How is your running time on battery?

 

Well, when it was working, the running time was about 2 1/2 hours (BatteryBar only showed 9% wear). I can't really run the computer anymore, because of the "always charging" bug the computer happily ran itself to zero power. Since it won't even turn on with the A/C adapter is plugged in, I'm sure something is wrong with both the A/C adapter and the battery. My attempts on ordering an A/C adapter from Malibal are a bit worrying: since it's for a previous model, they can't give me a clear timeline of when they can ship it to me other than "a few business days." So, it might be a while before I can start up my laptop again, even if I choose (which I will) expedited shipping. While I'm waiting, does anybody know if other companies sell A/C adapters and batteries that are compatible with the P150HM that have them in stock? There has to be some way I can get these sooner than Malibal's vague ETA.

EDIT: Upon closer inspection of the A/C adapter, the wire where it attaches to the box on the laptop side was pretty frayed under the electrical tape that I put on earlier. Perhaps some short or something happened. I'm really hoping this didn't fry something on my laptop, and that changing the battery and A/C adapter will fix it. Wish me luck

 

Ok, so I've got a new A/C adapter and battery. This A/C adapter works, and I can charge the battery now, but I'm still getting the always charging bug, even with the new battery. In addition, I'm getting random shutdowns while playing 3D games. I'm sure these random shutdowns are power related, not heat related, as I've cleaned my laptop fairly thoroughly: the fact that the short on my A/C adapter was on the laptop side leads me to believe something got confused with my laptop. Does anybody have any idea of things to do to fix this? Is there some internal power circuitry that I can reset or anything? While my laptop is under warranty, I'd rather not RMA the thing right now, I've spent long enough without my laptop already.

 

RMA time, sorry.

I recently sent my laptop in because the LAN port died, they (Sager) replaced system board.
New one came, on second day of use started freezing. Bios would even lock.
Sent back, Sager found power regulator on part of the board was bad.
Got yet another system board and so far so good.

In your case it's probably the charging circuit on the system board bad which can also impact voltages and thus the crashes. Also, because you are under warranty nothing you can do to fix this part.
You can try to reload windows to make sure not some driver issue or anything but if a clean install does the charge issue right off the bat I would RMA it before something causes other things damage.

I know it sucks, I just went a month without mine because the replaced board was bad and had to go back again but that is why we have warranty and I was taken care of.

 

Well, that's a bummer. I suppose it is best to have malibal repair the thing before I break anything else on it.

Luckily, my university has laptop rental for only $30/month, so I have a viable substitute for when my laptop is getting fixed. I won't have my games, of course, but maybe I'll actually get all my coursework done this month.

 

It probably won't take but a few weeks to get fixed also.

Once you got the RMA it's normally 3 days shipping to them, day or two to diag and day or two to replace the part and 3 day shipping back.

So probably by mid-end of second week you may have it back depending when they get it and what's wrong.

I know it sucks though, just went through same thing myself but worse because the RMA board was defective also they installed and didn't show in testing before they shipped but at the end it seems as good as new again

Makes me glad I got the 3 year warranty.