battery troubles

**blah789** · 11-11-2009, 06:47 PM

First I want to say I know almost nothing about laptop batteries.

OK so at the start of the year (january) I bought a brand new battery pack for my nc8000. I tested it out a few times and it worked really well. So I decided to store it and save it for whenever the old battery pack dies. So fast forward to november, just to check out how it is faring. I figured it'd be discharged so I put it in and plugged in the AC cord. The orange light kept blinking (it does that when there's a low battery), but after a couple of minutes it went solid. I figured it was charging. I checked a minute later, the light was off. I tried unplugging the AC cord and doing this a couple more times, same result.
So I booted and checked both in the BIOS and in Windows, and the battery wasn't detected.
I googled about why it wouldn't charge, and I stumbled upon this page
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/...readId=1001876
which gives an advice (4th post) about using paperclips and charging it yourself. I wanted to try at least reading it on the multimeter. Paperclips were too big, so I used sewing pins. I got a reading on my old battery of about 15V but the new one seemed dead. I tried it again, but I either couldn't get the pins in position, or something had gone wrong because I couldn't get a reading on either one anymore.
So I put the old battery (the working one) back into the laptop, and this time, it wouldn't get detected in BIOS or Windows either!!!!

My fear is (since the pins were really close together), I'd somehow touched them without knowing it and short-circuited.
I saw some creepy vids about blowing up batteries on youtube
YouTube - PC Pitstop: Laptop Battery Fire
and I'm really scared now (I put the old battery in the empty bathtub in the bathroom - i figured at least if it blows there won't be anything else it'll ignite)
1st thing tomorrow I'll buy new batteries from HP.

2 questions:
- do I need to fear the battery blowing up, or if something went wrong should it have happened immediately already?
- anything else you think i did wrong? I don't understand how just reading the thing off the multimeter could have killed it.

I understand now you can't "save" your battery for later (you have to use it right away).

Append: I forgot to mention: I tried my uncle's battery pack and it gets detected just fine in my laptop.

11-11-2009, 06:47 PM	#1 (permalink)
blah789 TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2,294 OS: Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP3	battery troubles First I want to say I know almost nothing about laptop batteries. OK so at the start of the year (january) I bought a brand new battery pack for my nc8000. I tested it out a few times and it worked really well. So I decided to store it and save it for whenever the old battery pack dies. So fast forward to november, just to check out how it is faring. I figured it'd be discharged so I put it in and plugged in the AC cord. The orange light kept blinking (it does that when there's a low battery), but after a couple of minutes it went solid. I figured it was charging. I checked a minute later, the light was off. I tried unplugging the AC cord and doing this a couple more times, same result. So I booted and checked both in the BIOS and in Windows, and the battery wasn't detected. I googled about why it wouldn't charge, and I stumbled upon this page http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/...readId=1001876 which gives an advice (4th post) about using paperclips and charging it yourself. I wanted to try at least reading it on the multimeter. Paperclips were too big, so I used sewing pins. I got a reading on my old battery of about 15V but the new one seemed dead. I tried it again, but I either couldn't get the pins in position, or something had gone wrong because I couldn't get a reading on either one anymore. So I put the old battery (the working one) back into the laptop, and this time, it wouldn't get detected in BIOS or Windows either!!!! My fear is (since the pins were really close together), I'd somehow touched them without knowing it and short-circuited. I saw some creepy vids about blowing up batteries on youtube YouTube - PC Pitstop: Laptop Battery Fire and I'm really scared now (I put the old battery in the empty bathtub in the bathroom - i figured at least if it blows there won't be anything else it'll ignite) 1st thing tomorrow I'll buy new batteries from HP. 2 questions: - do I need to fear the battery blowing up, or if something went wrong should it have happened immediately already? - anything else you think i did wrong? I don't understand how just reading the thing off the multimeter could have killed it. I understand now you can't "save" your battery for later (you have to use it right away). Append: I forgot to mention: I tried my uncle's battery pack and it gets detected just fine in my laptop. Last edited by blah789; 11-11-2009 at 06:48 PM.