Laptop Battery

[torob]

My laptop battery has recently seen a short lifespan, i havn't used it for a while and wasnt expecting to but i managed to fix the laptop.

The reading on the windows xp battery meter isn't accurate at all... when it sits on 100% it drops really quick, in less than minute to 97% and less than 3 minutes down to 80%
Then it makes a huge jump to 10/20% and then windows starts saying critical power blah blah

Once it reaches 10%, windows puts it in standby, but if i turn it on and let it drain to 0% i find that its not dead, it'll actually stay on for another 30 or so minutes

Is this a OS problem? Or battery itself? I know battery isn't really on fresh legs, and i'm wondering if you guys know solution to the battery meter and know any alternatives to buying a new battery, they are really expensive.

I've read that you can give the battery short "shocks" to remove fiber buildup in the Lion battery, or you can open the battery up, find the actual cell model # and order new ones online for about max 30 bucks...

Any ideas what option is best to get battery functioning nice, buy/shock/take apart?

Laptop is Compaq Presario R3000
Thanks

[nobb]

You can give ni-cd and ni-mh batteries large "shocks" to vaporize some of the crystals that form, but this isnt something you want to do with lithium ion.

Depending on how comfortable you are with this stuff, you can actually rebuild the battery by taking it apart and switching out the cells. Ive done this to my smartphone battery, but to be honest, if you dont know what you are doing, then its best to just buy a new battery.

[FreakinPrince]

what kind of laptop and how old is the laptop?

pm me your info

[frozenrice]

Would conditioning the battery do the trick? Run the laptop until the battery completely dies and then do a full charge (don't use it while it's charging). Repeat a couple of times.
That seemed to help with my Compaq.

[torob]

Originally posted by nobb
You can give ni-cd and ni-mh batteries large "shocks" to vaporize some of the crystals that form, but this isnt something you want to do with lithium ion.

Depending on how comfortable you are with this stuff, you can actually rebuild the battery by taking it apart and switching out the cells. Ive done this to my smartphone battery, but to be honest, if you dont know what you are doing, then its best to just buy a new battery.

I've been thinking of doing that, depends what you mean what i'm doing... i havn't done it before, but if its just matter of switching the cells it shouldnt be a problem. I just dont know once i open it up, where to find the new cells to buy from, which cells would match, etc.

Originally posted by FreakinPrince
what kind of laptop and how old is the laptop?

pm me your info

Compaq Presario R3000 // 4 years old maybe? could be even more
Pm'd

Originally posted by frozenrice
Would conditioning the battery do the trick? Run the laptop until the battery completely dies and then do a full charge (don't use it while it's charging). Repeat a couple of times.
That seemed to help with my Compaq.

I've done that a couple times, it helped, but its hard to tell with windows xp battery meter not being accurate at all..

[evoXfan]

in my old ASUS laptop's BIOS, there's an option to calibrate the battery, see if you have something similar.

[torob]

Nah the bios is really plain, updated too

[UndrgroundRider]

Lithium-ion batteries can be quite dangerous to monkey around with. In my opinion, find a new OEM battery on eBay.

[evoXfan]

You can probably manually calibrate it, someone already suggested it but here's a more detailed procedure and info:

http://www.rm.com/Support/TechnicalA...rer=MyComputer

[torob]

Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
Lithium-ion batteries can be quite dangerous to monkey around with. In my opinion, find a new OEM battery on eBay.

Problem is, they are so damn expensive, worth more than the actual laptop

Originally posted by evoXfan
You can probably manually calibrate it, someone already suggested it but here's a more detailed procedure and info:

http://www.rm.com/Support/TechnicalA...rer=MyComputer

Yeah i've been trying to calibrate it

[torob]

So i let it drain enough so it wouldn't power on anymore, then charged it to 100%, then let it drain again... but i noticed that when it trains, its at like 60% then drops instantly to 10%
Why is this? It kind of makes it hard to tell how much battery i have left, and how long i have left.

And it doesnt seem accurate still, its showing 0% right now, but i'm still working..