Laptop says "96% available (Plugged in, not charging)"?

[Daniel552]

I have an Asus X501A laptop and I've had it for nearly 2 years now and I have Windows 8 on it. A few minutes ago, the laptop fan went very fast and it was hot. Suddenly, the laptop stopped charging and the battery went from 100% to 98%. I checked if the extension lead came out of the plug in the wall and it was still in there. I checked the middle part of the charger to see if that part detached, but it was still completely attached. I also checked the part of the charger which goes into the laptop and it was still in there. I tried pulling it out of the charger and putting it back in again and that didn't work. So I turned off the laptop and then it said the charger was working efficiently again (I could tell because a small green light appeared under a small battery logo on my laptop). When the laptop was on properly, I checked to see if it was charging but it said "96% available (Plugged in, not charging)". It still says "96% available (Plugged in, not charging)". The laptop fan is much significantly cooler now, but I'm wondering if my laptop won't charge the same way again.

Is there any way I can prevent this incident from happening again? What should I do? Should I get a new battery if this is telling me that the battery is nearing the end of its life?

 

[orlbuckeye]

Dell/Alienware has an app called Dell Power manager that gives the same message but shows 75% and say plugged in not charging. What this does is similates the battery charging when it's plugged which in turn will help the battery last longer. Not sure if Asus has this but it sounds like it.

 

[1shado1]

What is happening is completely normal. My ASUS G75 did the same thing. It would charge to 100%, but unlike the old days where laptops would continue receiving a constant trickle charge to keep the battery at 100% as long as it was plugged in (which wears on the battery), it would stop charging the battery when it reached 100%, and just run off of the adapter. Batteries slowly lose charge just sitting, and even faster once they age. When my ASUS would lose 5% of it's charge over the span of a week or two, it would then be charged up to 100% again by the adapter. As orlbuckeye stated, this is to maximize the lifetime of the battery. My newer MSI laptop does the exact same thing. Perhaps the reason that your battery lost a couple of percentage points so quickly is because it has a higher level of wear than when new.