Laptop battery problems

[Hugo Nebula]

I have a problem with the level of charge from my laptop's battery. At 100%, the battery meter is showing about 2hours 10minutes charge. This then drops gradually at a consistent rate to about 55%, when it suddenly drops to 7-8% (about 10-9 minutes), then consistently down to nothing. I get about an hours charge from a full charge.

The battery is a Li-Ion, and the laptop is a Dell Inspiron model.

I've Googled, but there isn't a lot of info available. It doesn't seem to be a memory problem, but perhaps something to do with the charging software or hardware in the battery pack. I've updated the BIOS, but that hasn't made any difference.

Any ideas on how to restore my battery pack?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Hugo Nebula presented the following explanation :

It might be that the charge calibration of the battery is out of sync, or that the battery is nearing the end of its life.

You might try recalibrating...

Control Panel> Power Options> Power Schemes [Tab]...

Below the 'Running on Batteries'... set all options to never.

On the 'Alarms' tab, untick both options.

Now run the laptop on batteries until it shuts down due to the battery being genuininly flat.

Recharge and reset all the above settings back to normal - you might find some improvement.

[John Blessing]

2 years old it is probably done for.

[Hugo Nebula]

On Sun, 23 Oct 2005 15:13:54 +0100, a particular chimpanzee named "Harry Bloomfield" randomly hit the keyboard and produced:

It's 15 months old. I use it most days on the battery. Is this about the lifetime of a battery?

Hmm. It now reads 2:26 hours at 100% capacity, then a minute later it reads 1:20 hours at 99% capacity.

[John Rumm]

If well used, then possibly...