Thursday 23 October 2014

One way to Fix a Laptop Battery That Will Not Recharge

The Short
While the laptop is on and connected to the power supply, remove the battery, wait a few seconds and reinsert the battery.


The Long
Yesterday morning while using my laptop with the power supply, I noticed the battery percentage was not increasing over time like it usually did.

I tried powering off, removing the battery, waiting a while and reinserting the battery, then powering on.  This did not help.

I tried draining the battery all the way down, by leaving the laptop on the BIOS screen until the laptop shut down by itself.  When I plugged the power supply back in and powered up, the battery meter displayed "0% available (plugged in, charging)".  The display stayed at 0% and never increased, even after working on the laptop for one hour.

I tried updating the Windows 7 battery drivers.  Windows said they were all up to date.

Finally, I performed the steps that did work for my case.  While the laptop was on and the power supply plugged in, I removed the battery.  I checked the battery meter and sure enough it said there is no battery.  I reinserted the battery and checked the battery meter.  It took about twenty seconds for the meter to register that a battery was there.  Then it took another ten or so seconds before the  "0% available (plugged in, charging)" appeared.  This time the percentage did increase over time.

The battery is still working fine and recharging properly again.

This method will not fix all battery problems, but it sure did for my instance.