Laptop suddenly shuts off, battery meter off?

This happened recently, and I never paid attention so I have no idea how much times this has happened.

Just about now, the laptop suddenly shut off, thinking the battery might've died without hibernating before it completely died, I got the charger. Then I turned it on and the battery meter said 54%, which I thought was weird, and I unplugged it.
Minutes later, it shuts off again. So I get the charger. This time it says 62%. I'm now keeping it plugged and it seems to work.

I'm wondering, is the power meter off, and I would have to recalibrate somehow, or is some hardware within the laptop faulty causing this?
I have no other details as of yet, but I am now looking into it.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

-Slowhill

 

How old is the laptop in question?

Last year, I pulled a 1995 Compaq LTE Elite w/ a 486 DX4 processor out of my dad's closet. It had a battery and everything, but I noticed that the laptop would not charge the battery and the machine would suddenly turn off every 5 minutes. It turns out the battery was the problem. If your battery shows either 0% or it shuts off even though the battery is reporting a high percentage, then you need a new battery.

-J.B.

 

I got it around mid-last year, so it's not that old.
The battery cycle shouldn't have died out this quick, so I'm curious as to what's happening.
Any ideas?

 

Maybe your battery was slightly defective when you got it, and the problem grew worse over the last year. I always find laptop batteries to be dead if they only last 5 minutes after the laptop has been plugged in for a long time, the battery meter suddenly jumps down to a low percentage after you start using the battery, or the battery stays at 0% and dies immediately after you pull the plug on your laptop.

-J.B.

 

I understand dead batteries, and I don't think this is the case so I do believe it may be defective.
This has never been going at a constant rate; it occurs randomly time to time, so I'll never know when it strikes next.
I'll start intentionally letting the battery drain,
Looking for patterns; if what's happening tends to be consistant (dying at 52% for example) I'll go call the company to make use of the warranty.

- Slowhill

 

Did you ever find a solution to the problem? I have the same problem with my Dell E1505. I know it's not the batery as I borrowed a friends (same laptop as me) and it does the same thing with his battery that works fine in his computer. Tried restoring back a couple months, updating every driver I could, bios updated, turning all power settings to always on, ran Dell diagnostic on everything, full virus/spyware/malware scan, checked M-Soft website for any relevant patches, everything short of replacing parts or wiping and reinstalling. Just bothers me it started randomly happening and only doing it on battery power. I don't believe temp is an issue for me either but will run coretemp or something to make sure. But fan sounds the same speed on AC as it does battery so not sure why it would die on battery and not AC.
Seen many posts with the same problem but no nbe has ever posted a solution or what fixed it for them. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.
-Tim
P.S. Random thought but as I have been searching for help with my problem I have noticed many of the post regarding the problems I have have been posted aroundaugust-October 2008. Maybe a coincidence but that's when mine started doing it too. I've just loved with it till now.

 

I had the same problem with an Acer.It turned out to be the cooler became disconnected from the processor.It would over heat and the thermal protection would kick the unit off.Also a dirty or bad fan can cause the same issue.