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I have a Dell Latitude D430 and the battery is stuck at 43%, even though it's been plugged in for days. It runs on batteries fine, and then recharges back to 43% only. I have Ubuntu 16.04 installed.

battery meter

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  • Run battery diagnosis in bios and check.
    – BDRSuite
    Nov 22, 2016 at 6:29
  • This has nothing to do with ubuntu.
    – LPChip
    Nov 22, 2016 at 7:27
  • How old is the battery? It's probably dying.
    – David Schwartz
    Nov 22, 2016 at 8:18

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It can happen that a battery is not calibrated properly. Some BIOSses have the ability to calibrate your battery, but if thats not the case, the following will basically work with any recharchable battery.

Recalibrate your laptop

You will need to make the laptop run out of power first. So unplug and use it until the battery dies. Note that in windows, on a low setting, windows will go into hibernation. It is recommended to keep windows running with high settings until this point (to make the drain as fast as possible).

Then startup your laptop and restart and access the BIOS. In the bios, simply wait until the laptop turns off.

Now, start up the laptop as many times until it won't power up anymore. Given that you can only charge up to 43% I expect that this may be a lot of times. Could be as much as 100 times, but given that you make it run out in the bios, it may only be a few times.

When the laptop won't fire up anymore, without turning on the laptop, just put in the powercord and make it charge at least for an hour before turning the laptop on. Keep on charging until it reaches 100% before unplugging the powercord. This step is crucial, or the battery won't still be calibrated enough.

If the cicle is interrupted somewhere, it is better to restart the process.

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    That didn't work. I let it run out in BIOS and it wouldn't turn back on. I let it charge for a few hours and when I started up the OS it only went to 48%.
    – Chloe
    Dec 26, 2016 at 15:55
  • You must be sure that it charges all the way up to 100% before disconnecting the power, otherwise the calibration process will not succeed, and you need to start over.
    – LPChip
    Dec 26, 2016 at 20:54
  • ? This whole question was predicated on the fact that it NEVER charges up to 100%. Now it sticks at 48% instead of 43%.
    – Chloe
    Dec 27, 2016 at 5:34
  • That means that it still has residual juice when you let it die, even though it won't turn back on again. You can try to let the battery drain until it dies again, and when you can't turn it on again, take out the battery and use 2 wires and a simple lamp to test if the battery still has some juice. A simple lamp will likely not allow you to drain the battery fast enough though, but the brightness of the lamp will tell you how much energy there's still left. If calibrating the battery isn't working, you may want to consider replacing the battery.
    – LPChip
    Dec 27, 2016 at 7:31

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