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?
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

Hugo Nebula presented the following explanation :
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.

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.

--

Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

"Harry Bloomfield" wrote in message
...
Hugo Nebula presented the following explanation :
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.

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.

--

Regards,
Harry (M1BYT) (L)
http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk

Recalibrating might help. You don't say how old the battery is, but if over
2 years old it is probably done for.


--
John Blessing

http://www.LbeHelpdesk.com - Help Desk software priced to suit all
businesses
http://www.room-booking-software.com - Schedule rooms & equipment bookings
for your meeting/class over the web.
http://www.lbetoolbox.com - Remove Duplicates from MS Outlook
http://www.outlook-find-replace.com - Find & Replace in Emails, Contacts,
Appointments, Tasks and Notes

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

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.

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

You might try recalibrating...

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

Hmm. It now reads 2:26 hours at 100% capacity, then a minute later it
reads 1:20 hours at 99% capacity.
--
Hugo Nebula
"If no-one on the internet wants a piece of this,
just how far from the pack have you strayed?"

Hugo Nebula wrote:

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

If well used, then possibly...



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/