Acer Aspire Battery Help

[Jamesshamim]

Hi,

I have a rather strange problem - I have a year old Acer Aspire 5745pg Core i7 laptop which up until January ran perfectly. In January I upgraded to Windows 8 and after about a day my laptop would shut down on battery after only 10 minutes (Prior to installing it would last 1.5 - 2 hours). I reinstalled Windows 7 using Acer backup cd's.

This is where my major problem has started, when i re-installed windows 7 I started getting the "Your battery needs changing" alerts with the red X (with the AC plugged in, the laptop ran fine though); however when on battery after 10 minutes the laptop would completely shut off,not shut down, just switch completely off. The battery meter would say i still had at least 70% each time.
I installed Linux Ubuntu to see if this would solve the problem, however it still does the same thing, when on battery after about 10 minutes it shuts off completely. I have re-installed the latest Bios, tested the capacity of the battery ( windows says it holds 70% of original capacity charge).

Now my battery percentage in both Ubuntu and Windows just stays at 54% and states it is charging, however when I unplug the lead it turns off. I cannot turn the laptop on without the lead plugged in.. Now the most random thing, I was running windows 7 then shut down my laptop, when I turned it back on and booted into windows i got a blue screen, then after it restarted back into windows every single driver was re-installed, like everything you would see in device manager. Graphics, sound, network, IDE, processor - everything, I have never seen this before. The battery is still stuck at 54%. This is why I think it's not a battery fault.

I have done a powercgf -energy report and i got this:

Design Capacity 48840
Last Full Charge 40382

This also shows that the battery is still holding a decent charge, but the laptop won't turn on on just battery alone.

Any ideas/advice will be greatly appreciated.. I have done the standard take battery out, hhold power button in for 60 seconds, replace battery.

Thanks

 

[GodspeedFx]

Issues like that are really really hard to diagnose without physically being with the computer and having the proper tools, so there isn't a whole lot of help that many of us can offer over the forum for this particular problem.. If you get the same issue even AFTER doing a completely clean OS installation, that screams hardware issue to me. It COULD just be coincidence that it happened very shortly after you installed windows 8.

What I would suggest is to take the laptop to your local staples (if you have one near you.. they work on computers and are MUCH better and faster than best buy) and order a new battery there. Once it arrives, test it out. If it doesn't solve the issue, you can return the battery for a full refund. If it works, feel free to return it anyways and then order one of those wicked cheap generic ones online

I suggest you order it from a retail store like that because you can avoid the hassle of losing your money on shipping if you order a wacky generic one online and have to return it if that isn't the issue.

ONE thing you could try before doing that is re-installing the ACPI control method to do a sortof software reset on your battery. It's simple--navigate to your Device Manager and expand "Battery" at the top:

then select "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery", right click it, and click uninstall. Restart your computer and it will re-install itself, and then see if that helps!

Let us know what happens =)