tyson01

Original battery was getting weak, 30-40 min charge, got a new battery.
Charged it as recommended, 8 hours.
When I first tried it, it showed 100% charge 3hours, I used it for about 40min and it shutdown without warning.
It wouldn't restart with battery only, plugged in AC power and restarted, battery showed 70% charge, unplgged AC power and got shutdown within a few minutes.
Let computer charge overnight again, showed 100% again, shut down again at 70%, if I removed the battery then put it back in, I found it would restart and run in Safe Mode down to about 30%.
Figured it was just a bad battery so returned it.
New battery worked better but it shuts down without warning at 40-50%, about an hour and a half.

Running XP home SP2, Norton, power setting is portable/laptop have mobilmeter installed, temp ranges from 40-47c, HDD temp 40-41.
BIOS wireless power setting is default.

I never get shutdowns on AC power, and the old battery gave the waring at 20% and then 10% I have set the new battery to warn at 50% but thats seems a litte rediculous, lol.

Is there a reset procedure for a new batteries?

kinbard

Hi and welcome,
First off, what is going on when this happens ie gaming, videos etc, that could be draining the battery quicker? Could be that you were given a defective battery. Let me research your type of laptop.
Edit:
How many times have you charged/discharged the battery? It requires several times before you receive maximum capacity.

tyson01

Thanks for the reply.

The first new battery was charged and discharged at least 10 times, this laptop is pretty much used for just email(outlook) using built-in wifi to our home network.
When I figured out it was shutdown at 70% I tested it by running a saved video on win player, after shutdown, restart showed battery at 67% to 72%, also tested by just letting computer sit in stand by, it of couse lasted longer timewise but after shutdown and restart battery showed as above about 70% remaining charge.
I found I could discharge the battery farther in SAFE Mode, so I did this about 5 times, down to 20-30% charge, then did a full charge again.
It didn't matter that 70% seemed to be the magic number with full XP running, lol.

I exchanged that battery for another, EM-M2000 is the model number.

The new, new battery has been charged and discharged about 20 times now, it lasts longer but still shows at least 30% after no warning shutdown and restart.

mobmeter shows this new battery as 11% used which is odd but previous new battery also show 11% used, meaning it never reaches full charge capacity.
Original battery shows 52% used.

During charge and discharge the battery nevers gets "hot" only what I would discribe as warm, same as the original.
The original battery works fine when put back in, charges to 100% then discharges in about 20min. down to 20% and gives warning and will do auto shutdown at 10% as programmed.

Both new batteries are from the same manufacturer, but getting two bad ones in a row would be a real odds breaker unless all are defective.

kinbard

I've seen it with hard drives, but who knows. Just to have checked, what are your power management settings for the battery? Let me re-read through the post to get my mind back on subject.

tyson01

To add a new wrinkle, this new battery is about 3 weeks old now and been through several discharge/charge cycles.
It still shuts down without warning anywhere from 30% to 60%, I reset warning to 20%, and it has made to that point a few times, but mostly not.

New wrinkle is that the "wear level" shown in MobileMeter is now 22%, was 11% 3 weeks ago, when new.

From what little I know of this, the battery pack has a chip and software that "talks" with the XP or Emachine software, could I need a new driver for this battery maybe there is some confusion between the new battery pack and the Laptop, so the battery is not getting fully charged but showing 100%?

kinbard

Not sure. Need to research this laptop. I've had a few run-ins with e-machine desktops, but not their laptops. You said in post one that you had the power setting to mobile/laptop. Have you tried changing it to something else? Also, what is the exact model of the laptop.

tyson01

Its a M6410.

Yes I tried "Max Battery" and "Emachine portable" settings.

Checked the charging with mobilemeter and it seems to charge sporadically also, Battery is at 40% in this test.
When I first plug in the AC(yellow LED on) it will charge at 35-40watts then after about 20seconds it will drop down to 13watts(not chargering, just maintaining) and stay there for awhile, about 5 min, then popup to 35-40watts again and stay there for about a minute or so then back to 13watts, doesn't matter if I am running another program or just have the mobilemeter running alone.
I left it with the computer on(only mobilemeter running), for a few hours and it was only at 45% charge at that time.
I turned off computer and left AC in, yellow LED on, it took about 2-3 hours and yellow LED shut off, restarted and battery was at 100%.

Now if I use the old battery with the same test as above it charges at 35-40watts while computer is running until it gets to 100%

kinbard

The original new battery, was it the same model as the old one? What does your handbook say to replace the battery with?

tyson01

Yes same model battery "eMachines M2000"

Trying a new "refresh" on the new battery
Full charge then
start computer
Change Power settings to "always on"
Turn alarms off
Let computer run(without using it) until it shuts off
recharge to full(yellow LED goes off)

Restart and reset power settings

The above is from the eMachimes tech support

kinbard

Hmmm, something not good I found in my research:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/compu...ine_power.html

kinbard

Ok, from what I am seeing there is a problem with power supplys on e-maichines, and discharging the batteries actually harms the life to the battery. The question here is, is it the power supply, or is it the batteries? Download and install this
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...-Control.shtml
(Stolen from TheMatts sig )
Post the stats of the notebook.

tyson01

This I think is just for desktops, not laptops.

tyson01

I will try this and see what numbers I get.

The refresh didn't seem to make much difference, but the mobilmeter does show 11% used now, instead of 22%, lol, thats an improvement of sorts.

Yes, I have been doing some reading also and the word on the LiOn batteries is that they don't get memories like the NiMH batteries did and total discharge can even be a bad thing.