Toshiba M50 Battery Problems

My sons M50 has been running into some battery problems lately. I bought this machine from Future Shop in August 2005 and my wife used it for school for 1 year and now my son has been using it since September 2006.

Just recently, it's been acting up. The battery won't charge even tho the ac adapter is plugged into it and the wall. I just got a brand new adapter because the old one came apart (the wire frayed where the wire goes into the adapter part). I thought that was the problem, but the new one is doing the same thing. It's now getting difficult for my son to do any work on the laptop.

One thing I noticed is that when the adapter is plugged into the back of the laptop, it wiggles around very easily, however, the icon on the bottom right side of the screen is the adapter symbol and is charging, but if you wait a few minutes the charge is going down NOT up.

When my wife used to use the laptop, she always used it plugged into the wall, even at school. Do you think the battery has been totally drained? I've heard that you shouldn't have it plugged in all the time.

Oh, one more thing, the battery was not part of the sony battery recall.

Thanks, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

remove the battery and try running the computer from the adapter power only. if the computer runs fine then the adapter is good as well as the dc jack (the part where you plug the adapter into the computer).

 

Just did what you suggested and it appears to be working fine. I'll give it a couple of hours and then put the battery back in and see what happens.

Thanks.

 

That wasnt' to fix the issue, merely to diagnoise where the problem is.

BUT if that seems to have fixed your issue, kudos!

If when you put the battery back in, the laptop starts to run off of battery power like it did before its possible the battery is bad, or the circuitry controlling the battery/ac power switching is dammaged.

If the later is the case, then you're kinda screwed. But if its the battery then its not a big deal.

 

Thanks again. The only problem that I had when I took the battery out was that the laptop would sometimes shutoff all on it's own out of the blue. This only happened twice during the evening.

After that, I put the battery back in (with the ac plugged into the laptop and the wall) and the battery power started to drop automatically). So, I had my son use the desktop for his homework and shut off the laptop, but kept it plugged in to see if I could charge the battery and low and behold 2 hours later, the battery was charged.

So to recap:

1) When the battery is in the laptop and the ac is plugged into the laptop and the wall, the battery DOES NOT charge and steadily loses power, but sometimes the battery does charge, just not last night.

2) When the ac is plugged into the wall and the laptop (without the battery), the laptop works, but suffers from intermitant shutoffs.

3) When the battery is in the laptop and the ac is plugged into the laptop and the wall and the laptop is off, the battery charges to full power.

So the conclusion would seem to point to charging the battery will the laptop is off and then using the laptop only on battery power without the ac plugged into the laptop. Also, I think I may order another battery just in case. What do you think?