Ok, so I got a new battery yesterday. It worked fine last night; charged up the battery, then I unplugged AC power and ran it purely on battery power to see how much life it had – right at 1 hour. Then I plugged AC cord back in, the little battery icon on my toolbar changed to the plug icon as it always has, life was good.
Until this morning. Now, even with the AC plugged in, the battery icon stays on and it continues to run off of the battery. The AC cord appeared to be plugged in and working properly as always, so I went to Device Manager and disabled the battery to see what would happen. THEN it ran off of AC, no problem. But as soon as I re-enabled the battery, that became the default again and there was nothing I could do about it. This is a big problem because once it runs out of battery juice I have to shut down my laptop until the battery is recharged by the AC cord, because it just won’t run on AC power for some reason. I tried updating the drivers, there were no updates to be had for them, neither AC nor battery. Not sure what the heck to do from here.