Solved! HD Laptop shuts down on battery power

Oct 10, 2019
2
0
10
My 3 year old HP 250 G4 laptop has started shutting down with no warning when on battery power. After consulting a few online help places, it seems as if it could be the battery or the HDD. HP's help utilities tell me that the battery is fine, and that the HDD is failing. Whilst I am happy to try a new HDD, I don't understand how the failing HDD only manifests itself when on battery power and never when plugged in to the power lead. For example, 2 nights ago, it died on me a few minutes after being unplugged from the power lead (power level at 98%), then worked fine for a couple of hours with the lead plugged in. After updating the BIOS, did a restart, unplugged it, and again, after a few minutes, it shut down. (These shut downs are literally that, ie screen goes black, machine is completely switched off, as if you had unplugged the power lead from a desktop PC. Then, on pressing power button to restart, it fails to load Windows properly, gives a repair option, but generally you have to tell it to restart, then loads Windows fine).
So I guess what I am asking is, is this the battery, or is it the HDD, and if the HDD, why doesn't it fail when on AC power?
 
Solution
MartinS,
Have you heard the one about a rock and a hard place?
I've never liked HP or Dell so go with windows, no really I've had many hard drives fail and never did they turn off the computer. When a drive fails you are more likely to see a blue screen of death or just a locked up computer. Batteries supply power and when they go bad you have power problems.
Go with the Windows for now, come back and throw shade at me if I answered wrong.
Maybe the HDD needs more power than the battery can provide, while it hangs or tries to read/write. And the charger can get more stable power to it.
Or it´s just a coincidence that it crashed while running on battery. Could happen randomly with the charger as well.
 
Oct 10, 2019
2
0
10
A follow up. As I stated above, HP's utilities have indicated that the battery is fine and the HDD is failing. Last night I ran the Windows chkdsk and battery report, and these indicated the exact opposite - ie that the battery was losing capacity, and that the HDD was fine. Who am I supposed to believe, HP or Windows?
 

MDTOP

Great
Jun 6, 2019
72
3
85
MartinS,
Have you heard the one about a rock and a hard place?
I've never liked HP or Dell so go with windows, no really I've had many hard drives fail and never did they turn off the computer. When a drive fails you are more likely to see a blue screen of death or just a locked up computer. Batteries supply power and when they go bad you have power problems.
Go with the Windows for now, come back and throw shade at me if I answered wrong.
 
Solution