Laptop Shuts Down Without Warning {Only When On Battery}

[kidrow]

Hi guys,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 (core i3 330, 2gb ram) which for the past couple of weeks or so is shutting down without warning only when running on the battery.

By shut down, I don't mean that it goes through the normal shut down process for Windows. Rather it's as if someone pulled the plug while a desktop PC is running.

Also, when the shut down occurs, it is usually accompanied by a very brief, audible noise (static). (Like the kind you hear in movies when people talking over their radios switch over to the other person - 'Over')

The battery is a new one, purchased just last week. Even with the earlier battery, the symptoms were the same.

When the laptop is plugged in, it can run for hours without issue. Whether the laptop does or does not have the battery inserted when plugged in, does not make any difference.
But when running only on the battery, if fully charged, it usually will last for about 30-60 mins (only today did it surpass about 80-90 mins) before shutting down.

After such a shut down, if I attempt to power on the laptop again, it may or may not turn on.
If it does turn on, there's no saying how long it'll stay on for - it could be as little as a few seconds or as much as 20 mins.
If it doesn't turn on, I usually have to remove the battery once before I can start it again.
Despite doing this, there are times when the laptop won't power up. It's only when I plug it in that the laptop has successfully powered on every time.

On a few occasions, after such an improper shut down, I've found the laptop heating up either while charging or even with nothing connected but the battery, until I remove the battery. This doesn't happen on every occasion though.

I've run the Dell diagnostics tool found within the Bios on a couple of occasions & it hasn't come up with any errors. I've kept an eye on the CPU temps throughout & it isn't anything alarming. (~45-50 deg C usually). Also the fan does run properly.

I've tried holding down the power button with nothing connected (to drain the static charge iinm) on a few occasions but it hasn't made any impact. I've attempted to update the bios by running Dell's update program, but while it seems to run properly, the bios doesn't update. (I'd read that a corrupt bios could cause this. Since my bios version isn't the latest, I tried giving that a shot as well).

I've also "tried calibrating" the battery by charging fully & letting it drain completely. (But of course, the drain isn't ever complete, )

Could the CMOS battery have anything to do with it? The only obvious glitch my laptop has is that the time displayed keeps getting messed up.

So I'd really appreciate any inputs you guys might have. Thanks a lot. Cheers!

PS: The laptop is about 4-5 years old.

PS#2: I have a dual boot setup with Win 7 & Mint Linux. The problem occurs irrespective of the OS I've booted to.

 

[velo3100]

It is most likely that the power jack or the charger is faulty if the battery itself is new. Older batteries do tend to switch off without warning as mine did so I took mine out.

 

[Doesb5]

hey I had recently upgraded to windows 10 and at first it used to warn me about low battery indication at 7% but now it is getting shutdown only at 20% of battery that to without any warning can u guys please help me in solving my issue.....
thankyou all.........

Hi there, I had the same problem with my Toshiba tecra laptop running Win7 when on battery power. Problem occurred increasingly often. I took out the battery and sprayed contact-spray on the contact, waited for the spray to dry (30') at reconnected the battery. Problem hasn't occurred for over a month now...hope this helps

 

[velo3100]

I think most of your problems are related to an old or faulty battery. This happened to me a lot. My laptop would die when it was around 40% I think even though I calibrated it many times. I took the battery out and have been using the power. For me it not that much of a problem as it only had a 2 hour battery life anyway.

But for those that need the portability, I would get a new battery from the manufacturer and not a cheap or generic one.

This assumes that you have all the new drivers installed.

 

[DontDoWhatIDid]

Hello kidrow.
digging in some posts I tried to reset windows powerplans in cmd and it worked.

I apologize to any mods who find bumping to be rude but I found this thread while searching for someone with problems like mine. I found this thread, and what is described next is exactly the problem that I've had with my laptop, excluding the type of machine and other erroneous details (they are all fundamentally Von Neumann computers):

Hi guys,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 (core i3 330, 2gb ram) which for the past couple of weeks or so is shutting down without warning only when running on the battery.

By shut down, I don't mean that it goes through the normal shut down process for Windows. Rather it's as if someone pulled the plug while a desktop PC is running.

Also, when the shut down occurs, it is usually accompanied by a very brief, audible noise (static). (Like the kind you hear in movies when people talking over their radios switch over to the other person - 'Over')

The battery is a new one, purchased just last week. Even with the earlier battery, the symptoms were the same.

When the laptop is plugged in, it can run for hours without issue. Whether the laptop does or does not have the battery inserted when plugged in, does not make any difference.
But when running only on the battery, if fully charged, it usually will last for about 30-60 mins (only today did it surpass about 80-90 mins) before shutting down.

After such a shut down, if I attempt to power on the laptop again, it may or may not turn on.
If it does turn on, there's no saying how long it'll stay on for - it could be as little as a few seconds or as much as 20 mins.
If it doesn't turn on, I usually have to remove the battery once before I can start it again.
Despite doing this, there are times when the laptop won't power up. It's only when I plug it in that the laptop has successfully powered on every time.

On a few occasions, after such an improper shut down, I've found the laptop heating up either while charging or even with nothing connected but the battery, until I remove the battery. This doesn't happen on every occasion though.

I've run the Dell diagnostics tool found within the Bios on a couple of occasions & it hasn't come up with any errors. I've kept an eye on the CPU temps throughout & it isn't anything alarming. (~45-50 deg C usually). Also the fan does run properly.

I've tried holding down the power button with nothing connected (to drain the static charge iinm) on a few occasions but it hasn't made any impact. I've attempted to update the bios by running Dell's update program, but while it seems to run properly, the bios doesn't update. (I'd read that a corrupt bios could cause this. Since my bios version isn't the latest, I tried giving that a shot as well).

I've also "tried calibrating" the battery by charging fully & letting it drain completely. (But of course, the drain isn't ever complete, )

That's almost the exact problem that I had. I tried to install new RAM, failed, and reassembled only to find the machine non functional. The lights didn't come on indicating that the battery was charging, but if I left it plugged in for an hour or two it eventually came on and would boot. Then it would unexpectedly shut down. It never did this when on AC adapter power. This lead me to conclude something was up with the battery. I was prepared to spend $50 on a new battery when I found this thread as a last resort.

However there are a few things: I think that this unique situation is rare, and the advice given here though accurate and helpful in some situations (I fixed my father's Toshiba laptop once when it wouldn't turn on by doing the static discharge maneuver, ie. remove power and battery, hold power button for 30 seconds) but not this one. I tried that a few times before I concluded that it was no good (and it shouldn't work for you either if you have something like what the OP has described).

I noticed two things and it just clicked (I put two and two together) this evening. Firstly, the issue seemed to be related to the battery. I barely touched it or the contacts while doing my reassembly. I could not possibly believe something would cause a battery to fail like that. So I didn't. Secondly I noticed a bunch of heat coming from a part of the case and this happened only when the battery was in, and even when it was completely powered off. I knew there were no particular onboard devices I could have messed with. Its essentially an empty space on the motherboard, apart from the charging indicator LED's.

When I put these two facts together I realized that something must be preventing the battery from charging. I also realized that the extra heat (felt through the top and bottom sides of the case) was from the battery discharging in to some circuitry there. When electricity encounters resistance it releases energy as heat. Bingo!

I opened the case and moved some wires that were pinched in that exact spot. I hit the power button without even bothering to close the case properly and bingo! We have an operational system!

The other thing which made more sense to me was resetting the power plans via the windows command prompt. I did that. I don't know if it helped but it was the one thing I hadn't tried which made more sense than anything else.

I've been using it for hours now and it hasn't shut down unexpectedly.

TL;DR: Check your connections (internal + external), and use what you know to solve it.

I'm on an Acer Aspire V3 572G-70TA. I bought it last year (2015). Hopefully this helps!

 

[Rit_86]

When the laptop shuts down on battery power, after you plug it in and then turn on, what % of charge does it show left on the battery?
Also do the following steps and see if it helps.
Switch of everything and unplug the charger from the laptop.
Take the battery out.
Plug the charger to the laptop and the power supply and switch your laptop on.
If it switches on, your laptop is OK, the battery is probably the problem part.
If it switches on, again turn it off, unplug, put the battery back and give it around 10 minutes charge and then switch it on.
Give it full charge.
Then try it again on battery power only.

 

[kidrow]

Thanks for your reply. Will try that & update tomorrow. Have already fully charged the laptop. Once I use it on the battery, & it shuts down, I'll reply back.

 

[kidrow]

When the laptop shuts down on battery power, after you plug it in and then turn on, what % of charge does it show left on the battery?
Also do the following steps and see if it helps.
Switch of everything and unplug the charger from the laptop.
Take the battery out.
Plug the charger to the laptop and the power supply and switch your laptop on.
If it switches on, your laptop is OK, the battery is probably the problem part.
If it switches on, again turn it off, unplug, put the battery back and give it around 10 minutes charge and then switch it on.
Give it full charge.
Then try it again on battery power only.

Today, the laptop ran for more than 2 hours before the improper shutdown occurred (with about 15% battery left as indicated on the taskbar). Again, an increase for a 2nd day in a row. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but could it be that the battery is simply taking longer to re-calibrate?

Anyway, after the shutdown, I removed the battery & plugged in the charger. I powered it back on & it booted up without a hitch. I ran it for about 10-15 minutes.

Next, I removed the charger & put the battery back in. Again powered on the laptop. But this time I only got to the desktop & immediately there was the improper shutdown. I wasn't able to check the battery charge remaining.

I tried to power it back on a 2nd time. But this time, the led lights just came on for split second & the laptop went dead immediately without even entering the bios. This was probably the first time (after these problems started) though that one of the leds flashed red before going off.

Now I've plugged the laptop in & am charging the battery with the laptop powered on (i.e. running windows). Will recharge fully. Then report back after the next session.

So should I just continue fully recharging & checking to see if the backup improves, for a few days more?

Thanks.

 

[Daisy_Michael]

See the helpful stuff at http/windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/how-do-i-change-the-low-battery-notification & I hope it would be helpful (somewhat).

 

[kidrow]

Well, today the laptop shut down after about 40 minutes or so. Wouldn't power on. Removed the battery & again re-inserted it. Powered on just fine. Hasn't shut down since & now there's about 14% remaining. Still running. (At no point did I connect the charger.)

Couple of things I noticed today-

1. There is a high pitched but very faint noise emanating from roughly where the lan card is located. The sound is similar to water simmering/boiling in a kettle. (I can hear it if it's quiet or if a hold my ear close to the source.)

2. There is also a whirring or staticy sound when I scroll on the touchpad while I have the mouse button pressed down. This doesn't happen all the while though. It's a bit off & on.

Please help!

PS- As I'm typing, I also got the Windows 'low battery warning' with about 10% to go.

 

[Rit_86]

Something I haven't noticed before, you said the time keeps messing up and were suspecting the CMOS battery. Change it. It seems to be the most obvious culprit now.

 

[kidrow]

I did change the cmos battery a day ago. While the time displayed is now fixed, the shutdown problems still remain.

 

[temper724]

i have the same problem as you and co-insidently, its DELL also..The only difference is that mine shuts down whether on battery or charger....What could be the problem??

 

[kravata19]

Hi guys,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 (core i3 330, 2gb ram) which for the past couple of weeks or so is shutting down without warning only when running on the battery.

By shut down, I don't mean that it goes through the normal shut down process for Windows. Rather it's as if someone pulled the plug while a desktop PC is running.

Also, when the shut down occurs, it is usually accompanied by a very brief, audible noise (static). (Like the kind you hear in movies when people talking over their radios switch over to the other person - 'Over')

The battery is a new one, purchased just last week. Even with the earlier battery, the symptoms were the same.

When the laptop is plugged in, it can run for hours without issue. Whether the laptop does or does not have the battery inserted when plugged in, does not make any difference.
But when running only on the battery, if fully charged, it usually will last for about 30-60 mins (only today did it surpass about 80-90 mins) before shutting down.

After such a shut down, if I attempt to power on the laptop again, it may or may not turn on.
If it does turn on, there's no saying how long it'll stay on for - it could be as little as a few seconds or as much as 20 mins.
If it doesn't turn on, I usually have to remove the battery once before I can start it again.
Despite doing this, there are times when the laptop won't power up. It's only when I plug it in that the laptop has successfully powered on every time.

On a few occasions, after such an improper shut down, I've found the laptop heating up either while charging or even with nothing connected but the battery, until I remove the battery. This doesn't happen on every occasion though.

I've run the Dell diagnostics tool found within the Bios on a couple of occasions & it hasn't come up with any errors. I've kept an eye on the CPU temps throughout & it isn't anything alarming. (~45-50 deg C usually). Also the fan does run properly.

I've tried holding down the power button with nothing connected (to drain the static charge iinm) on a few occasions but it hasn't made any impact. I've attempted to update the bios by running Dell's update program, but while it seems to run properly, the bios doesn't update. (I'd read that a corrupt bios could cause this. Since my bios version isn't the latest, I tried giving that a shot as well).

I've also "tried calibrating" the battery by charging fully & letting it drain completely. (But of course, the drain isn't ever complete, )

Could the CMOS battery have anything to do with it? The only obvious glitch my laptop has is that the time displayed keeps getting messed up.

So I'd really appreciate any inputs you guys might have. Thanks a lot. Cheers!

PS: The laptop is about 4-5 years old.

PS#2: I have a dual boot setup with Win 7 & Mint Linux. The problem occurs irrespective of the OS I've booted to.

Kidrow this sounds exactly like my laptop! I've got an MSI GT70 but I don't use it for gaming, only a few times a week with graphic design software. I've had it for 2 yrs and last month (luckily just before warranty expired) sent it to MSI Australia to get it fixed for a loose cable causing flickering of my display.

I got it back and used it on battery and without charger and it just died on me with the same static sound you explained - it was at about 30% battery! It's happened multiple times at various battery levels and when I asked MSI what the problem was all they said was "it's the battery, you'll need to replace it".

Not impressed, I never had this problem before sending it to them for the display issue! I'm not convinced I need a new battery and I'm not convinced they didn't stuff something up knowing my warranty was pretty much up.

Did you ever find an answer??

 

[We_are_free]

Try this....because Microsoft software sucks.........turn off your laptop.......unplug the power supply......power the laptop back on....if it starts then you are okay.....wait until it is fully started and running then plug the power supply back in....this will reset the power plan software.........now unplug the power supply and it should stay on, so then you can plug it back in and be good to go....if when you try to power the laptop back on and it doesn't light up then it is either the battery has been damaged or the connector is damaged. One last thing you can do is reinstall Windows and start from scratch as it might be malware or a virus that has done it.

 

[cltschirhart]

Did you ever resolve this issue? I have the same problem with a Dell Inspiron i7.

Hi guys,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1564 (core i3 330, 2gb ram) which for the past couple of weeks or so is shutting down without warning only when running on the battery.

By shut down, I don't mean that it goes through the normal shut down process for Windows. Rather it's as if someone pulled the plug while a desktop PC is running.

Also, when the shut down occurs, it is usually accompanied by a very brief, audible noise (static). (Like the kind you hear in movies when people talking over their radios switch over to the other person - 'Over')

The battery is a new one, purchased just last week. Even with the earlier battery, the symptoms were the same.

When the laptop is plugged in, it can run for hours without issue. Whether the laptop does or does not have the battery inserted when plugged in, does not make any difference.
But when running only on the battery, if fully charged, it usually will last for about 30-60 mins (only today did it surpass about 80-90 mins) before shutting down.

After such a shut down, if I attempt to power on the laptop again, it may or may not turn on.
If it does turn on, there's no saying how long it'll stay on for - it could be as little as a few seconds or as much as 20 mins.
If it doesn't turn on, I usually have to remove the battery once before I can start it again.
Despite doing this, there are times when the laptop won't power up. It's only when I plug it in that the laptop has successfully powered on every time.

On a few occasions, after such an improper shut down, I've found the laptop heating up either while charging or even with nothing connected but the battery, until I remove the battery. This doesn't happen on every occasion though.

I've run the Dell diagnostics tool found within the Bios on a couple of occasions & it hasn't come up with any errors. I've kept an eye on the CPU temps throughout & it isn't anything alarming. (~45-50 deg C usually). Also the fan does run properly.

I've tried holding down the power button with nothing connected (to drain the static charge iinm) on a few occasions but it hasn't made any impact. I've attempted to update the bios by running Dell's update program, but while it seems to run properly, the bios doesn't update. (I'd read that a corrupt bios could cause this. Since my bios version isn't the latest, I tried giving that a shot as well).

I've also "tried calibrating" the battery by charging fully & letting it drain completely. (But of course, the drain isn't ever complete, )

Could the CMOS battery have anything to do with it? The only obvious glitch my laptop has is that the time displayed keeps getting messed up.

So I'd really appreciate any inputs you guys might have. Thanks a lot. Cheers!

PS: The laptop is about 4-5 years old.

PS#2: I have a dual boot setup with Win 7 & Mint Linux. The problem occurs irrespective of the OS I've booted to.

 

[Ravi Kiran_1]

Hi, I also have same problem with Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition (7520) as well, laptop shutdowns randomly if the battery is connected, works fine if there is no battery connected.

Please advice.

 

[velo3100]

It could be that the battery was short circuiting the laptop causing it to switch off. Did it work when a new battery was plugged in?

Hi, I also have same problem with Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition (7520) as well, laptop shutdowns randomly if the battery is connected, works fine if there is no battery connected.

Please advice.

 

[sarath9]

hey I had recently upgraded to windows 10 and at first it used to warn me about low battery indication at 7% but now it is getting shutdown only at 20% of battery that to without any warning can u guys please help me in solving my issue.....
thankyou all.........

 

[Neur0nauT]

Is the "New Battery" an official Dell battery? or is it a cheap alternative that was bought on a well known auction site? If it's a cheaper one, then that's maybe your problem.