Computers Laptop Battery Problem?

Joe

Joe

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I seem to be having a problem with my laptop battery.

The charger is plugged in and the indicator light on the "brick" is on, but the battery indicator software in the system tray does not show it charging (like it usually does) and the indicator showing the percentage the battery is charged slowly dropping. It's now at 67 percent.

What could be wrong? Do batteries just "go" this quickly?
 
I have had the wire part of my battery loosen and go bad at the connector point and that is exactly what happened. Try a power supply at a computer shop and see if that fixes the problem before buying anything.
 
Sometimes it is the female receptacle on the laptop that goes bad. I bought a new charger before I discovered this. It was hard to find someone to open up my laptop and replace the part because it was right up against an important thing (motherboard or something?) But he did and fixed it (old HP laptop).
 
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Thanks to everyone who replied.

But I think it was kind of a false alarm. Sorry. I brought the laptop home and plugged it into the charger that came with the computer. It worked fine. The problem seems to be that the other charger malfunctioned.

I know this may sound crazy, but I keep the original equipment Toshiba Satellite charger at home for fear of losing it.

I bought a Targus charger as a "travel" charger. I succeeded in damaging part of the wiring on that one, so bought another Targus charger. I had been using the "brick" on the old Targus charger, and the wall plug AC wire from the new one. So now I am using the new plug-wire and the new "brick," which seem to be working perfectly.*

I'll keep the old "brick" and play around with it to see if I can figure out what might be wrong with it.

*I know that having multiple chargers might sound crazy to many of you (and maybe it really is crazy) but I am a "belt and suspenders" (or "belt and braces" as they say in the UK) kind of guy.
 
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I had a recurrence of the same problem the other night. Again, took the laptop home and plugged it in and it charged up just fine.

So I've gotten an idea for an alternate diagnosis:

These problems have been occurring as I sit at the outdoor tables outside a particular Starbucks. There are cement columns that have metal pipes running down them with electric socket boxes near the bottom. This Starbucks closes at 10:30 PM, but often there are still people sitting around and talking or using the wifi or both.

Possibly Starbucks has been shutting off the power to these electric sockets after they close. Perhaps Starbucks is trying to discourage people from hanging around after hours. I did notice what looked like a new "No Trespassing/No Loitering" sign on the outward facing side of one of the columns.

I am plugged in there now and my computer is getting "juice." But maybe they don't shut off the electricity untill all the employees leave the store.
 
Joe said:
*I know that having multiple chargers might sound crazy to many of you (and maybe it really is crazy) but I am a "belt and suspenders" (or "belt and braces" as they say in the UK) kind of guy.
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Then call me crazy because I have a charger for my phone that I keep at home and one that I take with me for when I'm at work or visiting somewhere so I can charge my phone. The iphone battery does not have a long-enough charge life, IMO.

And, also, I am very absent-minded when it comes to leaving stuff behind. :D
 
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Indian Summer said:
Hmm, but you said in the first post that the indicator light on the brick was on?
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1) Old Targus charger has indicator light on brick; new Targus charger is virtually identical but has no indicator light.
2) If old charger is plugged into computer but no current is coming in from the electric socket, "brick" will suck charge out of computer's battery to light up the indicator light.(!)
 
KLS52 said:
Then call me crazy because I have a charger for my phone that I keep at home and one that I take with me for when I'm at work or visiting somewhere so I can charge my phone. The iphone battery does not have a long-enough charge life, IMO.
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I think we may be kindred spirits. :D

I too have two chargers for my cellphone, a "dumb" phone. Here's the story behind the two chargers. When I bought the phone circa 2008, it sold for $15--I kid you not. Then I looked at getting a spare battery. I was told this would cost $35. (Say, what?) So I bought two phones--one that I could "cannibalize" for the spare parts. It included the phone, battery, charger, instruction manual, the whole nine yards.

The new phone battery originally had nine hours talk time when fully charged. This gradually dropped until it was down to 90 minutes a few months ago. It got steadily worse and worse since then.

So today was "cannibalism" day. I replaced the old battery and my phone is now practically good as new. Replacing the battery might sound simple, but Virgin Mobile told me I might lose all my contact information if I changed the battery. (Most of my friends "pooh-poohed" this.) But I prudently manually copied my contact info into a spreadsheet first. When I changed the battery, all the contact info remained. Nothing was lost.

Kyocera is not making this model phone any more, nor making batteries for it. But there are a few new batteries available for it on Amazon.com Guess how much they cost? About $3.74 each--about 1/10th their asking price back in 2008.

Both the batteries and the charger configuration are "weird" and specialized to Kyocera. It might not make as much sense to keep spares if the configurations were standard and could be easily replaced at any electronics store.
 
Joe said:
1) Old Targus charger has indicator light on brick; new Targus charger is virtually identical but has no indicator light.
2) If old charger is plugged into computer but no current is coming in from the electric socket, "brick" will suck charge out of computer's battery to light up the indicator light.(!)
Click to expand...
Interesting! I didn't know laptop bricks could do that. We did experience something similar recently while on vacation. Jen had brought a special travel charger that you can charge in advance of the trip, then attach it to any USB type device to charge its battery. When she tried this with our tablet, it instead sucked the charge out of the tablet battery.
 
I am bumping this thread to tell you about a somewhat strange experience I had last night.

I went to one of those restaurants where you take your tray of food from a counter and then sit at any table you want. I looked for one of the few tables with an electric wall socket nearby, and plugged in my laptop's charger. As I was finishing up my computer session, I noticed that my battery charge indicator was down significantly. It appeared upon closer examination that no electricity was coming out of the wall socket and into the battery. Call me (insufficiently) paranoid, but I cannot believe I am encountering so many electric sockets with no electricity in them!
 
Joe said:
I think we may be kindred spirits. :D

I too have two chargers for my cellphone, a "dumb" phone. Here's the story behind the two chargers. When I bought the phone circa 2008, it sold for $15--I kid you not. Then I looked at getting a spare battery. I was told this would cost $35. (Say, what?) So I bought two phones--one that I could "cannibalize" for the spare parts. It included the phone, battery, charger, instruction manual, the whole nine yards.

The new phone battery originally had nine hours talk time when fully charged. This gradually dropped until it was down to 90 minutes a few months ago. It got steadily worse and worse since then.

So today was "cannibalism" day. I replaced the old battery and my phone is now practically good as new. Replacing the battery might sound simple, but Virgin Mobile told me I might lose all my contact information if I changed the battery. (Most of my friends "pooh-poohed" this.) But I prudently manually copied my contact info into a spreadsheet first. When I changed the battery, all the contact info remained. Nothing was lost.

Kyocera is not making this model phone any more, nor making batteries for it. But there are a few new batteries available for it on Amazon.com Guess how much they cost? About $3.74 each--about 1/10th their asking price back in 2008.

Both the batteries and the charger configuration are "weird" and specialized to Kyocera. It might not make as much sense to keep spares if the configurations were standard and could be easily replaced at any electronics store.
Click to expand...
My son has a Kyocera early android phone, and I recently bought him a battery for a couple of dollars on Amazon. He loves this phone although it has a relatively old and no longer upgradable operating system. :D

Kyocera Echo, a giant flop, it fizzled right out. :D
d18f4668dd57c632ebea703303079c41.jpg


Sprint's Kyocera Echo dual-screen Android phone announced, we go hands-on (update)
 
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