HP 6350b Laptop is my battery really dead or is it a software problem

Question

I installed windows 7 and noticed that the battery status was "plugged in, not charging". I tried unplugging the battery, uninstalling the microsoft ACPI compliant Control Method, updating bios,windows. All to no avail. at first I tought it was related to windows 7 because it's a brand new laptop. But I also tested with a knoppix live cd, and there the output of acpi -V is this

Battery 0: Unknown, 0%

What else can I test to figure out what's going on.

Answer 1

Turn off the computer, then unplug the battery (leave the power cord connected), then wait a few minutes, and plug the battery back in. If the charging indicator on the laptop lights up for a second then turns off, or does not come on at all, continue. If the charging indicator stays lit, leave it overnight (about 8 hours should be enough for even a stubborn battery) or until the light turns off, then continue.

Unplug the power cord and try to boot it up. If it does not boot, skip to the next step. If it boots and stays running a while, then run it until it dies (might help to set the Warning and Critical battery levels in Windows as low as possible, and run it in High Performance and disable Sleep, etc), then try charging it again. If you can charge it now, you're done, your battery just needed some sense kicked into it (some people call this recalibrating the battery, although I'm not sure if it is the right term). Leave it plugged in until the charging light turns off and do not unplug it or boot it until then. If the light does not turn off after 8 hours, the battery does not appear to charge at all, or the light has turned off, continue to the next step.

Plug in the power cord and boot it up, then unplug the power cord. If it turns off right away, order a new battery (call HP support first to see if they'll replace it free or at reduced price). If it continues running, go to the next step.

With the computer running on battery, check the battery in Windows. If it shows unknown battery status or no battery, skip to the next step. If it shows the battery status correctly, plug in the power cord. If it shows charging, you're done. If it says unknown status or not charging with a percentage not shown or less than 80%, continue to the next step.

With the computer running on battery, check the battery in Knoppix. If it shows unknown battery status or no battery, skip to the next step. If it shows the battery status correctly, plug in the power cord. If it shows charging, the problem is in Windows, and you should remove the battery, AC adapter, and anything with ACPI in the name from the device manager then reboot, check for updates at support.hp.com, or reinstall Windows if nothing else works. If it says unknown status or not charging with a percentage not shown or less than 80%, then the problem is hardware related but probably not the battery. Continue to the next step.

At this point, if the computer runs on battery but neither operating system shows the status correctly, look up your computer on support.hp.com and see if there are any BIOS or firmware updates. It's risky, so if you find one, follow the instructions EXACTLY and do not turn off or unplug the computer at any time during the update process. If you do not find an update, the update doesn't work, or you don't feel comfortable doing the update, call HP for a repair.

Answer 2

The only thing I can think of is to swap the battery with another one that's known to be good from another machine. Use a battery that's not fully charged so you can see both the level and the charging state.

If you do a two way swap then you should be able to find out what's going wrong. For example:

If your battery reports the same in the other machine then it's virtually certain it's the battery.

If your battery reports that's it's good in the other machine then it points to there being something wrong with your machine.

If the other battery reports "plugged in, not charging" on your machine then it's something wrong with your machine.

If the other battery reports correctly ("fully charged" or "80%, charging") then again it's the battery that's at fault.

Answer 3

It could be the AC adapter. If you have another adapter with the same specs, see if that works. I had an adapter that was providing enough power for the laptop to run, but not enough power to charge the battery. It stopped working entirely a few days later.

If the battery and adapter are fine, I would check the jack where the adapter connects. You said the laptop is brand new so the warranty ought to cover a bad part.