mattsprattuk

i recently bought a 2nd hand laptop off ebay, soon as i got it out of the box, gave it a quick check over and then tried booting it.
it worked, but it was the battery i was concerned about.

now my initial thought was 'it just needs to be charged, its ok'.
so i moved from the kitchen to the front room via battery (about a 20 meter walk so took about 15 seconds) now when i got there, the battery had gone from 10% to 1% again in that time. now when i plug the battery in it fails to charge and constantly says 'battery 1% charging'.

as you would with any new laptop, i reformatted and reprogrammed it, but i did this in the hope the battery would start working again mainly, but its still the same, so not a problem with the drivers or anything like that. ive flashed the updated bios and all sorts of things.

anything i should do? as i dont want to shell out £50 for a new battery

cheers if anyone can help


my other problem is that sometimes when im playing games, the laptop just resets itsself. it doesnt do it just whilst internet browsing, just on games like bf1942 and reservoir dogs or aoeIII... its really annoying! any help with that as well would be awesome

The_Other_One

A battery problem is almost 100% hardware related, so reformatting won't do a thing. A few laptops have a Battery Calibration option(my Averatec has it in the BIOS) Once when I stopped the calibration early, I couldn't charge above about 90%.

However, my guess is you simply got a dead battery. You didn't specify the age of the laptop, but after a couple years, the batteries will just give out. My dad's laptop(PIII 850) will now last about 10 minutes on the battery.

The other problem might be a heat issue. Though you could also try updating all the drivers and DirectX, if they aren't already up to date.

__________________
Urban De-Development
* Athlon X2 4200 | 2048M RAM | 160G HD | 7600GT
* C2D T5250 | 2048M RAM | 160G HD | Intel x3100
* G4 1.33GHz | 512M RAM | 40G HD | Radeon 9200

mattsprattuk

the laptop does get a bit warm on the bottom, could you be a bit more specific as to what you mean by a heat issue? battery or laptop heat? although the battery stays at a safe temperature.
its not an old laptop, its a P4 2.00ghz with 768ram (256 and a 512)
it also has a 64mb ATI graphics card. HP EVO N1020V.
i would think at that age the battery would be ok.
ive got the latest directx and i havnt tried extensively to update the battery management drivers (simply right click and update driver) but it didnt find an update.
do you think i could have calibrated the battery wrong? although even when the laptop is off, it doesnt charge.

Bramp

my moms laptop is fine surfing the net or writing in word documents, but when you go to play a game it over heats and shuts itself off (and it's nearly brand new). So it is very possible yours is getting to hot too.

4W4K3

If you run the laptop hard and it shuts off, it's most likely a heat issue, lots of laptops will simply shut off if they get too hot.

HOWEVER, it may lead back to the battery. IF you're putting a full load on the system, it needs to draw from the power supply more. If you have a power supply issue/battery issue/charging issue...the power your laptop needs might not be available quickly enough...and it simply shuts off. Kind of like short circuiting.

Run the laptop from the wall and play a game or something intense. If it runs fine, I would rule out the actual power supply in the laptop. There isn't much you can do to a battery if you don't have calibartion options (My Compaq doesn't as far as I know). So you might just need to buy a new one?

__________________
My Computer
I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe.
Can I eat your brain?
FOLDING FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND :F@H Team 44358

mattsprattuk

sounds about the same, but its wierd... battlefield 1942 uses more processing power than age of empires 3 right? yet bf1942 runs pretty much perfect the whole time, but aoe resets after about 30 minutes :S
im more concerned about the battery though.


the battery doesnt work, so do you think i could be trying to get too much power from the AC?
i tried it in a car with a power inverter and it reset about every 10 minutes so what your saying makes a lot of sense! any way of increasing the power input?