Laptop instantly clicks off at low battery - no warning

Lord Percy · World Chat Champion Joined: 03 Aug 2012 Karma :

About two weeks ago, my laptop warned me of low battery, then half a second later it just flicked off like a light switch. No chance to get it plugged in at all.

Since then, every time it gets to low battery (about 20% - not even the critical level of 7% or whatever) it just clicks off dead. No warning or anything, the whole thing just goes out like a light.

I did a bit of research and found I could run a battery diagnostic through the command prompt, which told me the battery was in perfect condition.

I then tried a system restore to a time before this issue started.

However it's still happening.

I'm guessing it's a software issue as it always dies at the point when the 'low battery' warning is supposed to pop up, which is still quite a way from battery being actually dead.

Thoughts??

Thanks

Andy_Pagin · World Chat Champion Joined: 08 Nov 2010 Karma :

Off the top of my head..
BIOS settings been changed?
I'm guessing you're running Windows. An easy way to take that out of the equation is to run it down to say 25%. Boot from a Linux Live CD, set the power management setting to whatever. Then wait and see if it shuts down at the same percentage with Linux.
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kramdra · World Chat Champion Joined: 28 Oct 2010 Karma :

My guess is inaccurate voltage measurement in the computer and the batterys internal low voltage protection kicking in. Check with a multimeter after it occurs.

Ben90 · Brolly Dolly Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Karma :

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/hard_reboot.png

Change low battery warning to 30%. Solved.
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Seb · World Chat Champion Joined: 19 Jul 2007 Karma :

It's just likely the battery wearing out. Set the shutdown percentage higher or replace the battery.
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Lord Percy · World Chat Champion Joined: 03 Aug 2012 Karma :

Ben90 · Brolly Dolly Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Karma :

Yep, it's somewhere in Control panel > Power Options > Change plan settings > advanced settings and it's the expansion box thingy called Battery at the bottom. Thumbs Up

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prawny1 · World Chat Champion Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Karma :

go into device manager and uninstall anything to do with the battery and powerpack then restart the laptop but go into bios, if you have a memory check built in run that until the laptop shuts off if not just leave it in bios to drain the battery.

When it has remove the battery and power up the laptop let it do a few shutdown cycles then replace the battery and let it fully charge, now go into power management and adjust the setting to do nothing on low battery warning and run the laptop flat and recharge a few times, this should recalibrate the battery meter.

once you are done reset the power options back to normal.
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Andy_Pagin · World Chat Champion Joined: 08 Nov 2010 Karma :

I mentioned BIOS just in case you'd been playing with the settings, or done a recent BIOS update.
As I said you can easily eliminate the O/S and software from the equation using a Linux Live CD, which won't install or change anything at all on your machine.
____________________
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa, hey-hey,
the men in white coats are coming to take me away.
Yamaha Vity -> YBR125 -> FZS600 Fazer -> FZ1-S Fazer