Windows 10: how do i find out if my battery is u/s when it will not charge

how can I test my battery to se if it is that that is u/s when it will not charge

:)

 

New battery not charging


I have an Acer Aspire V3-771 laptop (which is three and a half years old) with its original battery. As the battery is not holding the charge for as long as it used to I decided to replace it. I inserted he new battery, which already showed a charge of 60%, and let it run down to the point when the laptop turned itself off. However, when I tried to recharge the battery, the battery icon showed "6% available, plugged in, not charging". I contacted the supplier of the battery and they sent me a new one. This showed an initial charge of 93% so, in view of my problem with the previous battery, I decided to try and charge it up to full capacity before letting it run down. But as soon as I tried this the battery icon showed "93% available, plugged in, not charging". So I unplugged the charger and again let the battery run down until the computer turned itself off. I plugged the charger in again but then got "6% available, plugged in, not charging". I have no problem charging the old battery, so can anyone please suggest what the problem might be? I have tried taking out the battery and unplugging the charger and holding down the power button for 30 seconds, but this hasn't worked. Grateful for any advice.

 

Battery charging advice


By switching off the AC supply I mean using the switch on the mains hub which I have. It has 6 AC sockets and 2 USB ---- very useful.

I am still hoping to get an answer to my question --- when the battery reaches 100% and I get a popup notification saying "Fully Charged -- disconnect AC connection" can I in fact leave it on, in charge mode but not charging? My understanding is that the answer is YES, modern batteries are not harmed by being left on even if 'charging', but I would welcome reassurance.

Also, although I said above that when the charge drops to around 70% - 80% charging 'usually' starts up again automatically it should be 'sometimes' as what usually happens is charging does not start automatically, I have to Shutdown Windows to start charging again. I believe this to be a fault, either with the hardware or the OS, I have no idea which. It is not a major issue but can be inconvenient at times, and if I do not keep an eye on the battery status (for which I do now have some good apps) it can lead to a crash when 0% is unintentionally reached.

So an All-in-One Desktop does not have a battery? That seem to me to mean it is wrongly named as without a battery it cannot fulfill ALL functions can it? I can think of occasions when a battery would serve a useful purpose, but I have not used a Desktop for many years.

 

Battery won't charge to 100%, even though it says it did


The Sm@rtA$$ suggestion would be to replace the battery *Wink and to be totally honest that is the only surefire solution, Batteries have a usage life as well as a shelf life (which can mean that if a battery is stocked for a long time before first use you could already be part way down the road to failure.

There are methods to condition some older types of battery (NiCad), which tends to build up a charge memory if the users charges the battery too much - Ni-Cad batteries should be allowed to run down to almost no charge regularly to prevent this and following a similar but exaggerated system can work to reverse the issue -


Ni-Cad Conditioning

• Fully charge the battery
• Leave the device running at a high load, [Playing Video / music / encoding a video, (that you can afford to lose], after you switch off all battery saving options so that you can actually get to a situation that the battery gets so low that the device shuts down - leave for half an hour and try again as sometime the battery can "regain" access to more power reserve
• Fully Charge the battery
• Repeat This several times and also perform this action Once at least once a month

NImH batteries are supposedly immune to these issues but it can sometimes happen and the above routine may help but is just as likely to not do anything



The basic issue here is that a battery is a chemical reaction based device and the chemical reaction is reversible, (charging) only a set number of times ( you will often see very small print on rechargeable batteries stating an approximate number of charge cycles possible), the problem is that switching the device on when plugged into the mains supply is treated by the battery as a charge cycle. Some laptops will allow you to remove the battery and use it as a normal mains device - some will not - if you have to have the battery in place to use the laptop then don't plug it in if you can as this will actually improve overall battery life, both per charge and over the full life of the battery