eMachines laptop battery stuck at 43%

Hello dalmacietis mate please run PART A: of this and send back a shot of the readout

Using HW Info

PART A:

You can test the volts onthe PSU with HW Info HWiNFO,HWiNFO32/64 - Download <download the right bit version and close the right hand window select Sensorsand scroll down to the power section where you will see what the volts aredoing see my pic. In my pic the section (Nuvoton)with VBATT is a dead give away you are in the section for the rail voltages.There are other section titles and one that pops up often is ITE

Now the voltage on thedifferent rails have to be within 5% =+/- of what is required or the machinewill not work properly if at all.

See this for the railvoltage info

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-specifications-atx-reference,3061.html (Section 2.)

The original right handwindow shows the machine running and is handy for that but for looking at thecomponents in some detail close it and use the main left hand side panel

FOR OTHER COMPONENTS

PART B:

Open each small squarewith + in it on the section the components are in and then click on theindividual component/s (it willhighlight in blue) - in the right hand side will appear all sorts of detailsincluding brands speeds and other essential info that particular device. Seepic for example.
You should get a pic like mine and I want to see the volts and capacities it will soon tell us if the cells in the battery are failing.

Sorry mate the readouts are really letting you know the battery is going south if not there already. Most internal components work on very fine tolerances that is 5% +/- of the required voltage ie 12v = either 11.4v min or 12.6v max anything outside these voltages and it can damage components or at very least not let them work properly if at all - see that link in PART A:

Just to give you a simple example if say the CPU is being overclocked and is running at 3.4GHz on 1.0v just an increase of 0.2v could raise that frequency to 3.9GHz same goes for the volts to the RAM etc

So my advice is to replace that battery ASAP it could possibly malfunction in a way that you do not want.