Toshiba laptop

[chrisbard]

Today was browsing (laptop always sleeps and its mainly plugged in) when it sudenly died completely after about 4, 5 min of using (still cold), no front lights for charging, nothing. Removed battery and retried starting it without the battery no luck. Removed ac adapter from extension cord, repluged everything but no go, no lights on. waited for about 3 or 4 min, did a power reset without the battery and plugged in, lights came on and it started. Reattached the battery and it started but said battery is empty even if I left it plugged in previously. Now battery is at 32% and charging as normal. The battery in normal conditions works for about an hour. WTH happened, I would appreciate your ideas?! I hope it's not dying, simply because is enough for my current needs (intel centrino duo 2gb).

[cloasters]

Laptop batteries seem to have a limited number of cycles. This way you HAVE to buy another, even if the battery is perfectly sound. Love the way this works! NOT.

[robbie]

Haveing it plugged in all the time won't allow the battery to work at all, and thus do as you just listed. You can try to cycle it a few times over the next couple of days, but if you have the money just go get a new one. I would recommend one with a higher capacity.

And once you have a new battery, try to run it on just batteries every now and then.
BlackBerry8330m/4.5.0.186 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104

[danrok]

Run the battery right down, then charge it. Sometimes it helps.

[chrisbard]

I used it for about one hour before I had to plug it in. More weird stuff happening tho, like the power cable not connected and the icon in taskbar showing recharge or pluging it (3% left before plugging) in went to the kitchen when I came back it was in sleep mode and when started it said it went to sleep mode because it runed out of battery even if it was plugged in. I am suspecting a fault in the charger, maybe a short or something, what do you guys think?

[danrok]

Dodgy connection at the laptop's power socket?

What happens if you try to waggle the power connector where it is plugged in to the laptop?

[chrisbard]

\nothing, weird it seems alright...

[cloasters]

Intermittent problems, always the best. Cough!

[robbie]

Originally Posted by chrisbard

I used it for about one hour before I had to plug it in. More weird stuff happening tho, like the power cable not connected and the icon in taskbar showing recharge or pluging it (3% left before plugging) in went to the kitchen when I came back it was in sleep mode and when started it said it went to sleep mode because it runed out of battery even if it was plugged in. I am suspecting a fault in the charger, maybe a short or something, what do you guys think?

I think it's time for a new battery.

[cloasters]

Yeah, one of those nicely expensive 6-hour ones! Sheesh, I hope the new battery for my Dell is OK, it's still in the shipping box, I haven't even used it for prolly two years.

[booman]

those batterys will become problems if you never use it. Its best to run the battery all the way down and then charge it up.
Emptying the capacitors was a good idea.
I suspect the power connector too... because those things are so fragile where the AC adapter plugs in. If it gets knocked around too much, the connector on the motherboard can break loose from its solder joints. Pain in the butt to fix, but is usually fixable.

[cloasters]

Paying for fragility, ugh!

[cloasters]

Cheap and fragile from them, expensive money from us. Love that equation.

[cloasters]

And they do too, the unmentionable *#@&^%!

[radcon56]

My first thought was the power supply. Be sure to let us know how the story ends.

[Chozo4]

I had similar issues with my battery some time ago as well. Comes out the battery was so worn down that with any high drain from it, it would go from 100% to 92% at the normal pace until it hit around 91%. It would then instantly drop to 1% afterward thus forcing a shutdown or whatnot after unless I disabled the critical battery alarms.

Even more oddly enough - if I'd used RMClock to throttle it down as far down as possible, it would start to go back up in percent from 1% to 3% and hold there for another hour or two long as I didn't increase the amount of pull from the battery. I use that battery now as a battery backup on my laptop when it's plugged in for extended periods but it's a good sign that the battery if intended for mobile use is due for replacement.

I've gone through about 3 of those suckers over the course of 12 years on my toshiba [A15-S157]. They seem to last about 1.. 2 maybe 3 years if lucky as they don't last very long as far as any life span is concerned.

Curious myself as to your findings. Hoping it isn't an issue regarding the mainboard either but even then that's a pretty cheap fix; just cumbersome to replace.

[cloasters]

Mitsumi 5.25" floppy drive, definitely nostalgic. Ah for the days when floppies were floppy. Glad that they're historic!

[WonderBread]

I have found recently that Amazon has amazing deals on laptop batteries and tons of other things....Its like the new ebay...