Problems Solved
Is there a fix for my laptop’s battery?
Q I’m having problems with my HP Pavilion laptop. It works perfectly using Windows 10 but only when plugged into mains power. All indicators show that the battery is charging properly. However, unplugged it just powers off without warning. I don’t mean a normal shut down: it’s just bam – a blank screen, power gone. If I plug it into the mains, it then restarts. All the relevant settings within Windows look OK, and the HP diagnostics tool says that the battery is working correctly. Any more ideas, or do I need to buy a new battery? John Lindsay
A Unfortunately, you probably do need to buy a new battery. The fact is, all rechargeable cells have a limited lifespan. When they’re near or at the end of that lifespan, the symptoms you’re describing are exactly what we’d expect: instant power-outs.
The battery will show as charging, because it is. However, its original capacity is shot, so while it will charge, it’ll store very much less juice than it used to. Moreover, because measurement of a battery’s capacity is equal parts science and guesswork, there’s nothing particularly surprising about a diagnostics tool showing the battery to be ‘OK’: the battery is technically still working, but it’s just at the tail end of its life.
Incidentally, you can ask Windows 10 for its own estimation of the battery’s situation, which will give you a clearer insight. To do this, first press Windows key+x to open the Quick Launch menu, and then click Windows Powershell. Next, at the command prompt, type powercfg /batteryreport 1 then press Enter.
This will generate a battery report, saved to a file and location shown in the Powershell window. You can use your mouse to drag and select this full location, before pressing Control (Ctrl+c) to copy it to the Windows Clipboard.
Now, fire up your web browser, then use the Ctrl+v shortcut to paste the file location of your battery report into the address bar at the top, before pressing Enter. Next, scroll through the report to find the ‘Installed batteries’ heading: this is a summary of your battery’s health. The original capacity, measured in milliwatt-hours (mwh), will be shown alongside the ‘Design Capacity’ label, while Windows’ estimate of its current capacity is listed against ‘Full Charge Capacity’.
The particular number will vary wildly between battery makes and models, but the key is the ratio between the two.
The ‘Full Charge Capacity’ of a ‘healthy’ battery should be, say, at least half that of the ‘Design Capacity’ 2 . In addition, note the figure alongside the ‘Cycle Count’: this tells you how many times the battery has been effectively fully recharged. Typically, a laptop battery will be reliable for perhaps 500 or more charge cycles, but some will effectively die sooner than that.
But we’ll finish how we began. You can and perhaps should do all this for your own curiosity, but the likelihood is that your laptop’s battery has had it, so it’s time for a new one.