Compaq laptop doesn't show battery support

Could be any of the above.

As I understand it, older laptops used a combination of vendor-proprietary features, and APM, to provide support for battery and power management. Newer laptops use ACPI. Windows XP supports both, but prefers ACPI - APM-only laptops may or may not have ACPI support enabled by default. Even if the laptop does support ACPI, it's possible that XP can't use it - there were a fairly substantial number of systems which have defective ACPI tables in their BIOSen which don't function properly with some operating system ACPI interpreters.

According to Wikipedia, the 1200 series actually includes a wide range of variations... you might have a model with a bogus APM or ACPI. It's even possible that you have a model so old that neither standard is supported, and vendor-proprietary drivers are needed in order to enable power management.

First suggestion: boot up into the BIOS setup screens, and see if you can tell whether APM or ACPI is supported, and (if so) whether it's enabled.

Second suggestion: boot up Knoppix or a similar CD-ROM-based Linux distribution (which won't disrupt your XP install). See if it can "see" any of the battery or power management support. If so, this would indicate that the hardware is probably OK, and that XP doesn't have the right set of drivers or configuration.

G'day Sam,

Can you power up the laptop with only the battery? Probably a silly question, as the battery would be flat by now. The best method of eliminating hardware is try substituting the battery - if you can find another one of that vintage. Although it may be the power management software, if you're unlucky it will be the system board. If you can find another laptop of the exact same model, try substitution. First the battery, then the hard disk, which will eliminate the software. Does the laptop have any leds which register the presence of a battery?

Batteries are quite complex these days, with feedback circuitry of all sorts (I'm no expert on batteries). I read once that most laptop batteries fail not because of bad cells, but faulty circuitry.

Henry Mydlarz Australia

Thats interesting, kind of like drive electronics fail on HDDs.

Mike

Sam Goldwasser wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@plus.seas.upenn.edu:

You might visit support.dell.com, download the XP drivers for that model and install them.

I did that but only found drivers for the touchpad and something else unrelated. Is there a place at dell.com that will have all drivers for a machine that old?

BTW, installing the touchpad drivers did upgrade the touchpad from a vanilla flavored mouse, so that does suggest that whoever loaded XP, didn't have the Dell drivers.

Thanks.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ:

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

That should have read: hp.com or compaq.com. :) P.S. the complete model number is 12XL420.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ:

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

Sam Goldwasser wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@plus.seas.upenn.edu:

compaq.com, yeah!

Well, HP has a link for downloading the 'HP battery check' on

Perhaps, knowing what you are looking for, google can help you find it. Perhaps someone has the original installation CD for that model.

Good luck.

The link for Battery Check is:

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp32001-32500/sp32299.exe

Hope it helps :)

On 20 Feb 2008 08:30:44 -0500, Sam Goldwasser put finger to keyboard and composed:

All I found was this:

Is it possible that Win XP already includes the appropriate sound and display drivers? For example, do you see a "Trident Cyberblade Cbi1" video card in DM?

- Franc Zabkar

Thanks. I'll check it out.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ:

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

Right, that's all I found.

Don't know. The Trident does show up.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ:

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

"System is not compatible with this program" or something to that effect. :( :)

Thanks.

--- sam | Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ:

Important: Anything sent to the email address in the message header above is ignored unless my full name AND either lasers or electronics is included in the subject line. Or, you can contact me via the Feedback Form in the FAQs.

On 21 Feb 2008 08:54:18 -0500, Sam Goldwasser put finger to keyboard and composed:

Maybe you need to install Service pack 2 ???

====================================================================== Which Windows operating systems does the HP Battery Check support?

"The Battery Check supports Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2K with the .NET framework installed." ======================================================================

- Franc Zabkar

Sam, are you familiar with Belarc Advisor? It's free and very useful: Right click and save it to your computer, or just run it from their website to install on your computer.

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:13:11 +1100, "hemyd" put finger to keyboard and composed:

I believe "smart" batteries have a coulomb counter which maintains an accurate record of the state of charge.

See

The interface is I2C aka SMBus in PC terminology.

See

- Franc Zabkar