New laptop battery calibration question.

I bought a laptop battery for my 10 year old Vaio laptop from an eBay seller. It started up fine when I initially booted up my laptop. But when the power meter was in the 52% remaining neighborhood, the system shutoff. I don't mean hibernate, I mean it was like someone pulled the plug (if it were running on AC power). I booted up again on AC power and let the battery charge to 100% again, then I let it run off the battery with the AC power removed. This time it shut off at about 72% power remaining. The best it will ever do is stay on until about the 30% remaining mark. I contacted the seller and this was the response,

"Please try calibrating it first by doing the following steps:

  1. Charge the laptop up to its maximum capacity. Leave the device plugged for two hours or more.
  2. Disconnect the laptop from AC power. Disable any means in the Power Options for the laptop to sleep or go into hibernation before the battery charge is depleted to. Use or leave the laptop on until the battery is depleted to 3% charge, in which the computer automatically enters hibernation.
  3. Leave the laptop in hibernation state for five hours or more.
  4. Charge the laptop again up to its maximum capacity."

This seems a bit hokey to me. Why would a new battery need this much attention?"

Thanks for your reply,

--
David Farber 
Los Osos, CA
Reply to
David Farber
Loading thread data ...

"David Farber

** The laptop shuts off when the voltage drops below threshold - it has no idea what power is actually remaining in the battery.
** The procedure looks correct to re-calibrate the laptop to suit the new battery.

Essentially, the laptop has a continuously running routine that estimates the energy capacity of the battery by integrating time and current until shut off is reached.

This estimate is then used to produce the "fuel gauge " you see.

Seems your new battery has less energy capacity (ie AHs ) than the old one.

... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

It's not unusual for a weak battery to look normal to some high charge level, then drop instantly to zero. Depending on which version of which operating system, there should be some settings in the power profile to instruct the computer what to do when the battery is low. Disable all of them so the system doesn't shutdown on an alarm condition. Run it till it quits. The 3% is a good number, but your battery isn't calibrated, so I'd run it all the way down to zero. Note, that on some batteries, running it to zero might kill it. You may or may note be able to get the thing to calibrate.

I have several laptops that I just turn off the power monitor and remember about how long it will run...then save my work frequently.

There's a battery utility in PCWizard

formatting link
That attempts to determine the design charge, the current charge level and the maximum level for THIS instance of the battery. May not work on a laptop that old, but try it.

Laptop models change rapidly. For a laptop that old, you might find that the only "new" batteries you can find on EBAY were manufactured 10 years ago and stored in a container in Arizona. Lithium batteries degrade even if you don't use 'em.

Paying retail doesn't guarantee a good battery, but the cheaper it is, the less likely it is to be still good.

Reply to
mike

"mike"

** That is most likely the scenario here.

The eBay dealer is selling old, tired batteries.

BTW

All batteries degrade over time - it's called shelf life.

The worst are probably SLA or gel cells - good for one year in storage.

Then NiCd and NiMH are good for a couple of years.

Brand name alkalines and lithium coin cells are the best with up to 5 years in storage being OK.

When I say "good" I mean no significant deterioration.

.... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

That would most likely happen if one (or two) of the battery's cells had very low capacity.

Calibrating the battery is beside the point. If the computer shuts off abruptly, it's because the battery has run down to the point where it can't power the unit. This is not normal behavior. (Or more accurately, it is not the intended behavior.)

As has been pointed out, the reason for calibrating the battery is so that you can set reliable points for the unit going to sleep, hibernating, or warning you it's about to shut down altogether.

It seems almost certain the battery you bought is defective, or its capacity is substantially lower than that of the OEM battery.

What brand is it?

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

There is no brand name on it. It says it's 14.8 volt, 5200 mAh. The part number is, BP2NX. The capacity seems to be increasing now that I've charged it fully and let it run out a few times. One internet hint I got was to let it completely drain before recharging it. I did this by restarting the computer every time it shut off. It finally shut it down when the meter showed about 8% remaining and then I charged it fully again.

I'm in agreement with the folks that posted messages saying that this battery has probably been sitting on the seller's shelf for quite a while and it probably isn't in top notch condition. The files on my laptop which are in the recovery partition are from 2004 so that gives you some idea of how old this laptop is.

Thanks for your reply.

--
David Farber 
Los Osos, CA
Reply to
David Farber

About six months ago, I bought two Gmax batteries (one regular, one high-capacity) for my HP notebook. They're a-workin' still. (Remember the MAD ad parody?)

A brand name is no guarantee, but the lack of one is suspicious.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

"David Farber"

** FFS - the lap top has NO IDEA what the battery capacity is !!

Every time you run the battery down to the end point voltage, it recalibrates the internally calculated "fuel gauge" .

What has likely happened is the cells have become unbalanced - ie each has a different state of charge and capacity after being in storage for so long.

Cycling the pack helps restore cell to cell balance so you see some improvement.

... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Los Osos? Do you know an artist named Del? Tell him Dave said "How ya doin'". Thanks.

Reply to
dave

Hi Phil,

Let me see if I understand you correctly. The "fuel gauge" is in the battery and the laptop is just reading what the "fuel gauge" is telling it. It takes a few charge and discharge cycles for the "fuel gauge" to get an accurate estimate of the remaining charge of the battery. Is that about right?

Thanks for your reply.

--
David Farber 
Los Osos, CA
Reply to
David Farber

In a perfect world, yes. But the world ain't anywhere near perfect. Battery gauges have changed significantly over the years. You can get a relative reading on the battery charge level from voltage...sorta. You can get a better reading of capacity by counting electrons that go in and out of the battery. BUT The primary failure mode for laptop batteries is internal series resistance. You can have a lot of electrons left, but if the current peaks times the ISR causes the terminal voltage to drop below the trigger level of the internal protection circuitry or the laptop shutdown circuitry, the thing will shut off.

I've done low current drain tests on batteries that wouldn't run a laptop at all. I could get virtually all of the rated electrons out. But the ISR wouldn't let the laptop run.

Reply to
mike

I seem to remember pulling one of those Vaio laptops apart about 7 or 8 yea rs ago to establish which internal cells are dying or dead and there is a l ong thin circuit in them which seems designed to prevent you using the batt ery at all when some of the individual cells are dead. You could replace a ll the dead cells you liked but the circuit still told the computer to tell you to buy a new battery at the 50% or 75% mark. There is battery recondi tioning software which seems to re-program this circuit when it actually is the circuit and not totally dead cells doing the shutting off?

I tested by going to the POST screen and running the battery down as is rec ommended on this thread but with no software to tell anything what is going on besides the basic BIOS. You might get better results now by booting of f a Puppy Linux CD and installing Tuxmobil.org software to see what is goin g on.

Incidentally in my limited experience, I Have always found that batteries w hich are more than a few years old will suddenly drop from 50% charged to n othing in an instant. Of the batteries which drain all the way to nothing b efore taking whatever action they take (go into suspend or shut off dead) t he Mac batteries do this better than others.

There is a myth out there concerning running a burst of reverse polarity 12

0/240v AC through the battery for a second or so to break up crystals built up in the cell to rejuvenate it but I wouldn't count on this working: I pu t a question out on this forum a few days ago and no one seemed to think it was anything other than a myth. There was however a site you could go to called battery rejuvenation dot com or something like that where you could send your batteries to England for guaranteed rejuvenation (or he wouldn't charge you) but I never tried it and don't know if he is still in business.
Reply to
Amanda Riphnykhazova

The principle of a brief short or reverse charge to break up crystal formation is old -- it goes back almost 50 years. Motorola produced such a charger for Honeywell electronic-flash batteries, and (according to Modern Photography) it worked. (It also occasionally caused the battery pack to explode, which Modern never reported.)

Many lithium-cell battery packs have their own charging circuits. Putting 120V AC on the pack, even for a fraction of a second, is likely to destroy those circuits.

Your best option seems to be to learn from this experience, and buy a new battery. You can then have the time to decide what you want to do with the bad one.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

The problem with this is that these batteries can be a bit pricey, hence th is sort of thread. When the computer is over one model old, the companies a rrange for their battery prices to go stratospheric, possibly to goad users into buying new computers. After a few years of that, unless some indep ha s come in and started to produce them, most available batteries may well be old stock.

Possibly some users can chime in with evidence of any manufacturer which ca n be relied on to continue selling their batteries at faintly reasonable co st?

Reply to
Amanda Riphnykhazova

Googling for laptop battery rebuild service shows that there are several small firms rebuilding those packs.

Reply to
Sjouke Burry

PC Wizard reports the battery specifications as follows with the AC adapter disconnected and the battery fully charged:

General Information : Nb. Battery : 1

Nb. Battery (max.) : 1

Battery Information : Charge : High (98%)

Remaining time : 3:8:6 h Place : Unspecified

Battery Information #1 Manufacturer : Sony Corp Product Name : LXS12

Chemistry : Lead Acid

Technology : Rechargeable Cycle Count : Unspecified Designed Capacity : 65120 mWh Full Charge Capacity : 59240 mWh Capacity : 58170 mWh (98%) Level : 9%

Rate : -18.57 mWh

Voltage : 5.01 V

UPS : No

Is this information helpful?

Thanks for your reply.

--
David Farber 
Los Osos, CA
Reply to
David Farber

Well, there's your problem. Lead acid batteries can last many years, but are easily damaged by over-discharging them.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Looks like the program can't read/decode the chip in the battery.

Reply to
mike

Written on the battery is, "Rechargeable Li-ion Battery." That's an interesting discrepancy.

Thanks for your reply.

--
David Farber 
Los Osos, CA
Reply to
David Farber

Try the battery data in HWINFO32: If the battery supports the Smart Battery Specification, it should produce the required numbers.

I don't have a working antique laptop handy to see if it works any better. Maybe later. Also, I've had problems reading the data from various no-name replacement batteries purchased on eBay.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.