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Laptop battery only charges to 20%

By EStreetJerseyGirl ·
Hi! I have a Compaq Presario 1220 laptop, and even after leaving it running on AC power for over 2 days, the battery meter only shows the battery being charged to 20%. The laptop is about 8 years old, but was always run on AC power. The battery is a 9.6V Ni-MH battery, part # 293768-001. How can I get the battery to charge to 100%? Thanx! :-)

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by TheChas In reply to Laptop battery only charg ...

Sounds like you have at least 1 bad cell in the battery pack.

The "best" way to fix it is to take it to a shop that specializes in batteries.

There are battery shops in most major US cites.

They have the proper tools to repair or rebuild a battery pack.

Chas

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by Oz_Media In reply to Laptop battery only charg ...

As Chas said it sounds like dead cells, laptop batteries usually last about 1 year before drastically losing charge even if rarely used without AC.

You can cycle the battery and it will give you the Max available life out of the cell but this could only be the 20 minutes you get now if cells are dead or if it needs to be recalibrated (not common with that much loss though).

Try recharging and then completely draining the battery three times, it will cycle and recalibrate the battery but again, it's most likely dead cells. Laptop batteries are getting pretty cheap now, so replacement is probably more cost effective than rebuilding it, but your PC shop will determine that for you.

Good luck

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by p.j.hutchison In reply to Laptop battery only charg ...

I suggest, you let the battey completely drain BEFORE recharging it. There are cases when remaining charge is 'remembered' and causes issues with recharging.

See
http://mobileoffice.about.com/cs/laptops/ht/extendlaptopbat.htm
http://www.computerbits.com/archive/1998/0200/lbattery.html

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by EStreetJerseyGirl In reply to

Actually, I had done this yesterday; I had to pop the battery out over and over to get it to completely drain ... and now I've been able to get it to hold a 50% charge, which lasts about an hour. I completely drained it a few times, but it seems like 50%'s the best I'm gonna get from a 6-year-old battery.

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by EStreetJerseyGirl In reply to Laptop battery only charg ...

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