Dead laptop, but battery ok. (?)

[magnemann]

Hi, appreciate if anyone will help.
Have a compaq mini 700 (model 730eo). The problem is that the laptop is COMPLETELY dead when only the battery is used. No lights or fans appear when I try to turn on.

When I use the power cord in addition to battery, everything seems fine. OS (lubuntu) shows that the battery is charging. And a LED also shows that it is charging.
The LED turns off after a while when it is fully charged as it should.

OS 'recognize' the battery and gives information about voltage, type, etc. When the battery is NOT present, the OS says 'battery is not present' ... Therefore I do not think that the problem is due to poor contact between the battery and laptop ...

The machine also works with ONLY the power cord, no battery.
If I pull the cord, the laptom dies immediately.
The battery is only a few weeks old and has worked fine.

The error occurred after I inserted the hdd again. (I removed the hdd that has some bad sectors, to run the OS from the SD card instead.)
I suspect that the battery is OK, and it's a loose wire or switch somewhere ... Suggestions, anyone?

 

[magnemann]

Now I've tried a different battery, and is IS a faulty battery.
I've neve heard of this battery behaviour before (battery not giving power to pc, but os reports battery ok)

Can anyone comfirm or explain this behaviour?

thanks

 

[jaguarskx]

It's a common issue with laptop batteries. I think the average life of a battery is 3 - 4 years. Batteries slowly loose it's rechargeable capacity (meaning less battery life) and eventually the battery dies. It will no longer recharge even though the battery indicator on the laptop states the battery is charging.

If the laptop lasts you another 3 or 4 years you will likely go through this again. Or if you decide to buy a new laptop, you will also deal with this issue again.

 

[magnemann]

hi,
yes, i know its common to gradually get less battery capacity over time. But i've never seen one dies completely in one day like this one.

 

[jaguarskx]

It happens. In one day the battery for my IBM ThinkPad T40 lost half it's capacity. That occurred when it was around 4 years old. One day 5 hour battery life. Next 2.5 hour battery life.