Old satellite 2100cds battery problem

First of all. Hi to everyone I am a noob on this site and look forward to more visits.
I was given an old 2100cds by a friend. He told me it worked OK but the battery was dead, and it was. I was even having problems turning the laptop on with the AC plugged in. I went and bought a new battery and tried charging it for 24 hrs now. When I check the battery life on the sys tray it says there is only 8% reamaining on the battery. I believe it should be fully charged by now. Could someone point me in the right direction?

 

Welcome to the forums.

Did you buy an official Toshiba batttery? If you bought a cheap off-brand model, that could be your problem.

Read more in the battery guide.

 

Thanks for the link.
Yeah it's a cheapy. I didn't want to spend 100 bucks on a genuine because the computer was old and I don't want to throw away money on it. Intresting thing is I let wear out last night and started recharging again. I checked this morning and it seems to be taking the charge now. It chraged to 20% in about 7hrs.
Once again thanks for your help. I look forward to posting more as your team has a great forum here.

 

You may want to see if you can find the manufacturing date on that battery. If it's really old, that could be another reason for it not taking the charge well.

 

Just an update. After trying several diffrent things and expeimenting I found the problem. It was not the battery after all. I was having trouble powering up the laptop without the battery. After applying a little pressure on the plug in the back I found it was not making a good connection. Therefore whenever the battery was connected the laptop, it was drawing power from the batttery instead of the AC. So obviously there is a loose wire there or the soldering has come off. I still have to open it up and see inside. Anyways I plugged it in and put a weight on the plug at the connection end. When I woke up this morning to my relief the battery light was green and when I turned it on it was showing 100% battery in the power saver settings. Only question now is why the icon in the systray is still red when it should be green indicating full battery? Just thought I would let everyone know just in case they are having the same issue.

Thanks again for all your help.

P.S.- Should I start a new thread on the icon issue?

 

Thats good to hear! - So how many hours did it say in the morning? And how many hours is it suppose to say?

 

Aha! The loose wiring bandit strikes again!

So does the red icon indicate "charging" or "running on battery power"? My guess is the cord/connection is not holding together as well either way.

The plugs on older systems get a lot of abuse because of the way they are twisted and turned so much. Newer systems now feature "L-shaped" power plugs to accommodate some of that twisting into their design.

 

In the configuration option in the control panel it said I have 3hrs and some minutes of charge at 100%