Battery falling while plugged in

Loser

New Member
Whenever I turn on the laptop, after a few minutes, the battery starts draining. When I turn it off, it's unplugged, yet, the next time I turn it on, the battery is magically back at 100%, then it once more stars draining after a few minutes. I took my laptop for service twice to solve this. The first time, they replaced the motherboard, but the problem reappeared after a while. The second time (today), they replaced the battery. And yet, once more, it's draining while plugged in. Has this ever happened to anyone?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Is the charger the original one that came with the laptop? Thats the only thing left to consider.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Drain dead or just down a little bit? It'll frequently bounce between 95-100 for me when plugged in. That's normal.

BIOS flash might not be a bad idea if it's draining significantly.
 

Loser

New Member
Drain dead or just down a little bit? It'll frequently bounce between 95-100 for me when plugged in. That's normal.

BIOS flash might not be a bad idea if it's draining significantly.
At first, it would drain to 95% or so then stop. Over time, the draining accelerated. Before I took it for its second service (a few days ago) it would drain to 85% or so. (Note: Every time I turn it on again, it was magically back at 100%, although I keep it unplugged when it's turned off.) After the second service, it starts at 71% when I turn it on, gradually increases to 82%-83%, then starts falling again, though every time I turn it on, it shows 71% (I remind you I keep it unplugged when it's turned off.)

Can anybody make anything out of this?
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Do you manually unplug all the time and just use battery power? That adds a lot of charge cycles. You can leave it plugged in while off, the charging circuit is regulated.

I've seen chargers gradually fail where they provide a decreased amount of power that can't run the system and charge the battery at the same time. The voltage in the battery would restore a little bit after being used and then not, additional readings when the system is on are probably showing you the right charge.

You can also use a linux boot disk to pull info off of the battery. There's probably a Windows tool for that but I don't know one off hand. Here's some output from my laptop's failing battery as an example
┌─[beers@Betsy-v3]─[~]
└──╼ $upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
vendor: Samsung SDI
model: DELL 5CGM417
serial: 28294
power supply: yes
updated: Tue 09 Feb 2021 12:18:43 PM CST (69 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: fully-charged
warning-level: none
energy: 11.3109 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 11.3109 Wh
energy-full-design: 62.16 Wh
energy-rate: 0.0111 W
voltage: 12.237 V
percentage: 100%
capacity: 18.1964%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-full-charged-symbolic'
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'd still vote a BIOS flash. Seems like it's not getting detected properly almost. If you haven't replaced the charger, do so. Leave it plugged in whenever you don't need to physically move it around. Even when not in use. Pointless to unplug it constantly unless you need the portability.
 
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