"Consider Replacing Your Battery"

All of you with battery problems-- I beg you to please, please read the blog post pointed to by the following URL:

Engineering Windows 7 : Windows 7 Battery Notification Messages

Well, I have read through this entire thread, as well as several other forums and blogs on this issue including the article in the post above, and as of now I am not convinced that this is strictly a worn out battery issue. I have experienced issues similar to those described but as of yesterday I am having some very odd issues.

First, I am using an HP dv5t with the 12cell Li Ion battery. I recently upgraded a little over a month ago to Win 7 x64 from Vista x32. Everything was fine until about a week ago when I started to receive the red x and the consider replacing your battery message. I noticed that my battery life was shorter than it usually was but not quite as bad as others have described. I was now getting about 45min-1hr vs about 2hrs previously (which was already poor considering its the 12 cell battery). However, unlike what I have seen others describe, the red x and the message are not always there. When plugged in it is always present, but when I unplug it and run on just the battery the msg and the red x disappear after a little while (not sure exactly how long but not all that long after) and do not appear again until I plug it back in. Also, previously when I would reach critical battery level the monitor would shut off and go into sleep mode. Now the computer just shuts off completely, sometimes before reaching critical battery level without even warning of low battery level.
Now here is where it gets weird. Yesterday while charging I took out the battery before it had finished charging (around 69-70%). When I reinstalled the battery, it would say that it was charging but would not increase in %. I unplugged the power cable and plugged in back in and it started to increase again but would not reach 100% (Stopped around 86%). I unplugged it, drained it down, and then charged it up again and it reached 100%, but now continue to see it plateau at around 70-80%. I have to unplug it and plug it back in for it to reach 100%. In addition, once charged and running on battery it does not seem to reflect the actual remaining power. I ran it for half an hour just now and it said it was at 71%. 2 min later the computer completely shut off. I immediately turned it back on and plugged it in and it said it was at 44%. Obviously the 71% was not right, but the 44% cant be right either because there would be no reason for it to unexpectedly shut off with 44% remaining. I have run the powercfg several times at different battery levels, different power plans, and both on battery and plugged in. Before I started experiencing these more recent weird problems but after red x appeared, it was reading a design capacity of 56610, last full charge of 17050 (30%). Now it reads the same design capacity, last full charge of 18470 (32%), but instead of recognizing the battery chemistry as LION it is saying that it is NiMH. How is that possible? How can a battery that is just worn down be the only issue here? How would that result in the powercfg report erroneously claim I am using a NiMH battery now for no apparent reason?

Oh and btw, I started typing this post as soon as I turned the computer when it was at "44%". It's now already claiming that its back up to 96% in 15min or so it took to write this up

I'll bet a dollar to a donut that if you're Win7 is showing you that your battery has a problem and you replace the battery that Win7 will no longer indicate a battery problem.

If after the replacement you still have the same problem, then by all means contact Microsoft. I guarantee you that they want to hear from you. As of today, all cases which they have investigated were due to defective batteries or defective hardware which was truly not charging the batteries or was actually discharging the batteries.

I stumbled upon this thread trying to find how to calibrate my new battery. The manufacturer suggested calibrating it before using, but their instructions seem to be for XP. I recieved this laptop used, and have no idea of the battery's history. It ran XP originally, and I have been running W7 beta, and build 7100 since repairing the MB power jack. The battery life has slowly degraded until I could just get past booting, and loging in, before it would power down. Figuring the battery was due for replacement, I got a new one. I never actually did recieve the "consider replacing" notice, BTW.

Before calibrating the new one, I decided to try to get a little more life from the original, maybe use as a spare if anything. What's weird, is even before I tried recalibrating, it started showing signs of life. The first time, it took almost an hour of very light-idle use, to drain IIRC. I have run it through two charge/drain cycles, and it seems to be holding almost a 2 hour charge, watching a DVD, on the optical drive. I can't get a powercgf report from my lappy. It is a Compaq v2410, and has VERY poor support from HP/Compaq. (Go figure huh?)

I am now in the process of calibrating the new battery. Once that is done, I will try to see what the approximate difference in runtime is between the two. The bottom line for me, is that a) The manufacturer recommended this process on my new Li-Ion battery, and b) My other battery was only good for paperweight as far as I knew. Recalibration is worth a shot, in that case. There's alot of information, and mis-information on this topic. I suggest you do a little research, and try a bit of troubleshooting, before making snap descisions. Read through this entire thread, and the links. It helped me alot.

It seems the battery problems are most common with people who have SWITCHED OS's, from either Vista-W7, or XP-W7. IIRC, every problem I read about in this thread was on an upgrade.

roadrunner426 said:

... The manufacturer suggested calibrating it before using ...

What steps did they tell you to follow to calibrate it. Would be interesting to know.

Thanks.

I should clarify...
I believe my problems were caused by improper driver(s) for my laptop's motherboard manufacturer, and not WIndows. I have had numerous problems with driver support from HP/Compaq. My laptop is only about 2-3 years old. It has a 64-bit processor, and widesceen format. It is running W7 64-bit on only 1 gig ram (2 gigs recommended minimum, by WIndows) pretty well, aside from some driver issues, and sluggish performance when taxed. But appearently, if I want to run Windows 7, I should just go out and buy a new HP or Compaq laptop, as HP/COmpaq have decided my system is not worth supporting.
Luckily there are other consumers, professionals, and hobbiests, that find solutions, even when the manufacturers either can't, or can't be bothered. MS did a terrific job with the pre-release of W7, to help manufacturers slove these issues before release (poor drivers are probably the main reason Vista was such a failure) and though I am no MS fanboy, I don't think this is flaw in W7, as much as it is the hardware manufacturers.

Peregrine said:

roadrunner426 said:

... The manufacturer suggested calibrating it before using ...

What steps did they tell you to follow to calibrate it. Would be interesting to know.

Thanks.

It basically describes doing a full charge/discharge of the battery. You need to disable any WIndows setting that will power-down, sleep, hibernate your lappy, to allow it to continue to discharge PAST the warning point. It differs from what snlu178 wrote around page 1-2 on calibrating the battery only in the settings used to achieve this.
It also recommends charging batteries to only 60-80% when they are to be unused for an extended amount of time (around a month). Interstingly, this is the ammount of charge the battery held when I recieve it. Nice to see they follow their own advice eh? :)
I will definately be looking into more info on batteries, as there seems to be alot of myths, and facts to be learned, and knowing the difference might save me some money. Turns out my old battery was in pretty good shape. I don't mind having bought a second, as now I have a spare, but if I had known, I would've upgraded my memory first.

Well I am following the instructions I found for my laptop how to calibrate it. I know its way off cause battery care which I have had installed for some time now told me Sat. that I had 12% wear after 6 months not bad. today its at 63% wear. That's a bad reading from something. I tried a full discharge but windows still shutdown. HP recommends a complete drain so I follow instructions here to make windows allow that. I am fully charging and will see what the charge level is compared to what I am told it will be. Then a will do the complete discharge and see the reading again and see if anything changes.

I find this very odd to jump so fast. There has been no updates done or major system changes so I don't see it as windows 7. I wonder if it's just a very large bad batch of batteries.

well the first charge didn't change anything, battery care is telling me I had 24 mins left now its 47 min. a little odd since I have not done anything different in the last 2 minutes this changed. Doing a full discharge now to see what happens. HP's Battery Check says the battery is fine so will see what happens in 42 min.

If the battery truly is shot then I am getting a 12 cell over the 6 HP offers. I like the little lift it will give the back end plus the time should go from 2.5 hours to I hope about 5 which would be great for all the movie watching me and the wife do. Plus I have found new batteries for 1/2 the price HP offers.