Laptop immediately shuts down/won't turn on when unplugged

[Raven A]

After about two years of sitting on a shelf, I decided to try out my old laptop (2011 Acer Aspire TimelineX 5820TG) and install Windows 10 on it. Turns out, the battery doesn't work properly anymore.

When I turned it on the first time (while plugged in), it said 0% charged. It never got above 0% while turned on, which was about 2 hours. When I unplugged it, it shut down immediately.

Then later that day, after having it charge the whole day (while the laptop was shut down), the charge was 100%. However, when I unplugged it, it still shut down immediately. When I started it back up, the screen started flashing blue and black, and I wasn't able to log in to the laptop, so I had to do a system restore.

Now I've read online that there are multiple explanations, the first being that the battery is busted, and the second that the BIOS is outdated. The problem being, that the Acer supported software that updates BIOS costs money, and so does buying a new battery. So before I spend money on this, I want to know for sure that it's going to fix the problem

How can I tell which is the actual problem?

 

[jaguarskx]

Difficult to say. Batteries can degrade overtime even when not used.

All batteries discharge power overtime whether it is a laptop lithium-ion battery or a store bought Duracell AA alkaline battery. If a the charge in a lithium ion battery drops below a certain threshold charge, then the battery can be effectively dead. No amount of charging will bring it back to life. I am not certain of the reason why this can happen.

Not sure what site you are trying to download the drivers from, but apparently you are not downloading them directly from Acer who does not charge money to download drivers. Do a search for Aspire 5820TG from Acer's site.

http/us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

 

[Supermuncher85]

If you don't want to splurge for a new battery...you could...just leave it plugged in