Nick Charlton - 2005-05-25 11:42 AM
Hi All,
I've just noticed that my basicly new laptops battery is dead,
(the warranty ran out ages ago
) Is there any utility I can use to examine the remaining living cells?
Or anything else I can do?
Thanks,
Nick
Depending on your notebook model, it may come with a recalibration tool or battery check tool. Compaq has that since very early models when ni-mh batts were the norm.
There may be some generic batt tool, but most likely will only tell you the batt level, which is prob wrong if the batt is dead.
If all fails, try opening the batt case, unsolder one of the batt wire, wait a few secs for the charge controller circuit to drain out then re-solder back. Or you can also unsolder all the wires going to the charge circuit and resolder back after awhile.
I read on the web that many devices, like Apple iPod, iBook, PowerBook had these problems with their batt packs. The cells are basically still ok after 1~2 years. Its the charge controller's internal voltage counter that went kaput, causing incorrect levels to be detected from the cell, and hence charging to less than max level. Most of the users opened the case unsoldered and resoldered back, and find their batt to be back to "normal". Most of them claim that the batt life is back to almost like-new levels!
The same applied for the m300 batts I had, that I read online. In some cases, the cells are really dead. In which case
(last case
), get new 18650 cells and replace the lot. In the process, you get to up the capacity with 2400mAh cells instead of the typical 1500 or hi-cap 1800 or 2000mah cells!
Note: If only everyone posted their non HPC woes in this off Topic column and not into the other HPC related columns!
