New Battery Problem

Hi All,

Recently the battery in my wife's laptop died (full charge would last about 15-30 min at best), so we replaced it. The problem is that Windows 7 still thinks the battery is dead, and immediately pops up a warning when the computer boots saying basically "warning, your battery has 4 hours and 30 minutes of charge left, you should change it or plug it in." Now, in and of itself, this wouldn't be a problem, but along with this, the OS will randomly hibernate the computer as it would to prevent data from being lost from a dead battery, only it never does it at 10%-15% battery, but rather 50%-90% battery.

Is there some setting or process that needs to take place to get the computer to stop thinking of this battery as a bad battery? Or is the battery bad and we should just send it back?

Thanks,
Greg

You might simply change the setting so that when the laptop is plugged it, it has NO OFF -BUT ALWAYS ON.
I USE THIS SETTING - all the time to stop just that. even leave the system on doing nothing for 2 or 3 hours to fully charge the battery.
also most laptops have a two color indicator on the battery which you can see when the lid is closed... wait for it to indicate full charge.
THE MANUFACTURE SHOULD HAVE SENT YOU A MEMO. MOST NEW BATTERIES ARE NOT EFFECIENT UNTILL CHARGED/RAN DOWN - THREE TIMES. If you set at least one day to do this... you can charge-rundown and recharge at least 3 times in 9 to 12 hours. I also usually run down in the dvd usage to FULL erase and record on a DVD RW- wow that does take the power. Set the ERASE to FULL ERASE not FAST.
PS: you might also retest the old BATTERY, this way....depends on how old your battery is.. it is suppost to be NO BRAIN so this erronous info does not happen.

We've had the battery for a couple of weeks without any change in the behavior. In that time we've run it down and filled it up many times and it still doesn't work right. It seems that windows thinks that the new, working battery, is the old not working battery, hence the warnings and shutdowns, even though windows itself admits the battery has hours of use in it...

You might try a BIOS refresh.
I have not had the problem in Win 7, and I have not seen anybody else with the ?? problem. So I'm thinking it might be in the BIOS.
You have verified that the NEW BATTERY is 100% then same as recommended by the manufacture. (OEM) type.
Verify the battery model # against the manufacture site for equal to or same as.

If your technical ability allows: remove the battery, locate the master NEG and POS terminals. should be approx 11 to 14 volts. locate a 12volt lamp, small in size, amps can be either large or small, I prefer small amps to DRAIN batteries.
attach carefully the Pos and Neg terminals of the lamp to the battery. (yes, carefully)
it might take 2 or 3 days to run the battery DEAD. the smaller the amps to make the lite work the longer it takes. the longer it takes the more accurate you are... from like t flashlite battery (12 vt) i then switch to a LED (very small amp) lite. as long as the lite works the battery still has a charge. I do the same for C-phone batteries. and it allows the last 30% normally not used to drain, when the battery recharges it see longer in need and many times restores almost original battery life.

BE PATIENT - not sure it will work but I'd try it If i was 100% sure the new battery was the SA the old battery... or play with the old battery and see if it fixes it.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8200 (I think on the number...), and the battery we bought was the dell model built and specified for that laptop. The new battery is 100% as is verified by the fact that, aside from the windows warnings, and the preventative shutdowns, it does indeed last for 3-5 hours on a charge. Also, the two batteries won't have the same product numbers as the new one is an extended life battery and the original is not.