Pantagruel

Hi,

I purchased a new laptop a few months ago, and have struggled with an irritating power-supply problem ever since. The supplied battery seems to work reasonably well in two respects: it charges up quite quickly while the machine is switched off and plugged in; and it will sustain about 2 hours of use when the machine is unplugged. If the battery is fully charged, and the machine is powered up with the external power supply connected, it will work fine.
My problem is that the battery will not charge up from a depleted starting-point (say 50% battery) while the laptop is in use. I can’t switch from relying on battery power to relying on external power supply without restarting the machine.
Plugging the machine in when battery power begins to get low results in the battery monitor in the ‘tray’ at the bottom right hand of the screen displaying “plugged in and charging” for about 20 seconds only. Then it reverts to “plugged in, not charging” and the battery continues to discharge. Removing the battery at this point results in immediate power loss, and it becomes necessary to startup afresh, with the battery out. Likewise, if I’m using the laptop on the external power supply, and put the (slightly discharged) battery in, it will also switch to battery power without recharging – with the same annoying outcome.

The machine is a Toshiba Satellite M100, running Windows Vista Home Premium. The battery is a Li-ion Toshiba PA3399U-2BAS. The external power supply is 15V.
Given that the battery is relatively new, and that it seems to charge up OK when the machine is not in use, I doubt that this is a hardware problem. It could also be a normal limitation of the battery, I suppose, but I find that hard to believe.
My guess is that the problem is software related, and the fact that the battery does recharge when the laptop is started in ‘safe mode’ or when it is hibernating, seems to back this theory up. But I’ve searched MS help, the Toshiba website and web tech support forums generally without finding any other mentions of a problem like this. Mucking around with the power-plan settings in Vista makes no difference. I’ve tried updating to the latest BIOS from the Toshiba website, but this also hasn’t helped.
I’d really appreciate any suggestions at all as to what else I could try here, since this issue is causing me a surprising amount of inconvenience at work.

Thanks,
Ed

Terrister

Dupe post. Please use the post below.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...chine-use.html