"hemyd" wrote in message
u...
"Sam Goldwasser" wrote in message
...
This is a Presario 1200 series. It works fine in every other respect
but not only does the battery not charged or recognized, there is no
evidence that the OS even knows this is a laptop with a battery.
Device Manager has no entry for battery management and the "Power
Options"
entry in Control Panel doesn't have a battery mode.

So, is this bad OS install or bad hardware? It's XP. Yes, believe it or
not,
I'm not running Dos 3.0 on this one.

Any comments appreciated. This isn't a big deal as the battery is old
and
most likely dead anyhow, but I'm curious.

Yes, I know what they say about curiosity....

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G'day Sam,

Can you power up the laptop with only the battery? Probably a silly
question, as the battery would be flat by now. The best method of
eliminating hardware is try substituting the battery - if you can find
another one of that vintage. Although it may be the power management
software, if you're unlucky it will be the system board. If you can find
another laptop of the exact same model, try substitution. First the
battery, then the hard disk, which will eliminate the software. Does the
laptop have any leds which register the presence of a battery?

Batteries are quite complex these days, with feedback circuitry of all
sorts (I'm no expert on batteries). I read once that most laptop batteries
fail not because of bad cells, but faulty circuitry.

Henry Mydlarz
Australia



Thats interesting, kind of like drive electronics fail on HDDs.

Mike