13 replies to this topic

[shadowx]

Well for car batteries and some other smaller (AA size) recharables you can zap them with a high dose of electricity to sort of break through the crystals and dissolve them. This might only apply to lead/acid type batteries. The theory is that when the battery is empty there are small crystals in the liquid inside, the electricity destroys these crystals as it charges, but if you constantly recharge at say 20% charge then 20% of the battery solution doesnt get a full cycle of charging/discharging so these crystals just get bigger and bigger to a point where the normal charging voltage cant destroy them, hence they need to be zapped by a much bigger charge to destroy them.

but wait, i do NOT suggest you try this with a laptop battery, it could result in explosion or fire. Neither of which is particularly good. so first contact Sony support, they have had issues with dodgy batteries in the past and if your laptop is fairly new (say 2 years) they may just replace it for you.

Another option is of course a software issue, so try downloading a free laptop power/battery monitor from download.com and see if that reports the stopping at 80% or if it says you are going to 100%. If it says 100% then download a second, different software to do the same job just to confirm it.

[iGuest]

I have the same problem, but itUncharged Laptop Battery

Yeah basically me and southergirl have the same problem, the system recognises that you've had the battery installed whilst being plugged in at the wall, after a few weeks it asked me if I wanted to reduce to 80% charge rate to prolong battery life? I pressed yes, but now I'm using my laptop on the go again and I need it charge back to 100% capacity...

This I assure you is not an error with the batteries, it's a purpose built system preference to prolong battery life...

Any ideas how we change back to 100% recharge capacity?

Thanks peeps!

-reply by Johnny fishhead

[iGuest]

Dell D600 batteryUncharged Laptop Battery

I've found a couple of people who have modified their D600's to work around DELL's flakey "is this a dell adapter" circuit failures.  I'm a victim of this, bought several batteries thinking they are just bad, a couple of DELL adapters - who'd have thought that dell put in a circuit and into the bios that if the chip in the ac adapter does not talk properly to the chip in the laptop, slow down the CPU and refuse to charge the battery.  Yep, that is it.  The little pin in the middle of the AC adapter plug carries this signal.  Wiring is poor and prone to break.  The chip in the laptop also fails.  Dell doesn't talk about this, of course.  It's expensive and annoying to do the logical and buy a new battery, new adapter and still have the probably because DELL programmed it into the laptop to purposely fail this way.  (Of course, after that, DELL's solution is to buy a new motherboard - not that they want to manufacture reasons to make you buy more DELL stuff <ahem>.)  My D600 runs at 600mhz instead of 1600mhz because the bios says "unknown adapter" - which is genuine DELL.  And then there is the original problem, it won't let the laptop charge the battery.

My guess is all the "put it in the refrigerator, power completely down and back up, etc". Is really moving around the adapter wire and remaking contact on this poorly designed setup - so it looks like rolling the dice, swinging the dead cat over your head, etc. Is what is responsible for your fix.  I suspect most of us are simply victims of DELL's program to break your laptop if they think you are not using one of their AC adapters.  Why no class action suit, I don't know.  It really makes me mad.  Last DELL for me, ever.  Just unethical stuff, ya know?

-reply by Joe B