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Dell Battery meter suddenly dropped charge from 100% to 8%

Anonymous
2009-10-01T14:08:12+00:00

Hi,

I have a dell inspiron 1525 system and got a vista home premium edition factory installed.Untill very recently my battery was working normally and used to charge and show backup power of almost 8 hours.One day all off a sudden it started showing battery power as only 8% and wont charge above it.When i check the battery health using the battery meter it shows the battery as performing normally.

I have hardly made use of the battery for the past 1.2 years and cant understand how it suddenly dropped from 100% to 8%?

It is a 8 cell battery.

Please help.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2009-10-10T16:16:31+00:00

    thanks for the reply..

    i installed battery bar and it also shows  me battery as 9 %.

    My concern here is that how all of a sudden the battery can drop from 100 % to a mere 9% ?????

    Using BatteryBar, hover your mouse over it and look for the line "Battery Wear". That will show you how worn out the battery is.  As batteries age, they lose the ability to hold a charge.  Dell batteries are good at reporting the current capacity they can hold versus their designed capacity.

    You can try recalibrating the battery by running the battery all the way down to 0% and then charging it again with the computer turned off.  Wait until it says it's stopped charging and then run it down again.  That may help reset the battery's memory.

    Chris Thompson

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  2. Anonymous
    2009-10-04T04:10:31+00:00

    thanks for the reply..

    i installed battery bar and it also shows  me battery as 9 %.

    My concern here is that how all of a sudden the battery can drop from 100 % to a mere 9% ?????

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  3. Anonymous
    2009-10-04T03:43:31+00:00

    hi johny,

    thanks for the reply.

    my battery does charge but wont go above 8%.

    however, i will unplug my computer and try to see how long it runs...

    i will also look at the forum u suggested and get back ..

    thanks a lot ..

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  4. Anonymous
    2009-10-01T14:18:15+00:00

    What kind of battery is it?

    Does it actually charge, but it is not reading correctly? Try unplugging and see how long it lasts.

    Also, there are quite a few threads on dells community about this same problem, might want to check them out.

    http://en.community.dell.com/Search/SearchResults.aspx?q=Search try some searches for your problem, I have found quite a bit, might be helpful

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  5. Anonymous
    2009-10-01T14:17:56+00:00

    Hi,

    Check with Dell and their forums as it could be a known issue.

    Dell Support

    http://support.dell.com/

    Dell Forums

    http://en.community.dell.com/forums/

    Old battery? Unplug power to computer - remove battery and clean the contact with a pencil

    eraser (do not use this if you battery has thin slots just clean the knife edges that fit into

    them and be careful). Batteries do wear out if old, or it could be a problem with the computer.

    Check with the support of system maker and many have on line forums.

    I use the free version of BatteryBar to monitor my battery. Click the Green button on the Yellow box on

    right side of page to download latest stable version 3.1 build 60

    BatteryBar

    http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar/index.html

    Hope this helps.

    Rob - Bicycle - Mark Twain said it right.

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