I got the BF a new laptop battery for his birthday, because his current one gets about 15-20 minutes of juice on a full charge. I install it today, and let it sit for a few hours, and then check the charge level. Still at 0%. Open up the battery monitor window from control panel, and it recognizes that the battery exists.
I’ve tried:
Reflashing the BIOS to the newest version,
Removing and reseating the battery, and
Unplugging the AC adapter to ensure that the battery really was dead and not just lying to me. (It was.)
The computer is a Satellite L25-S1194 running Windows XP, and the new battery is a 3rd-party 4400mAh battery (model number PA3420U-1BRS) The battery gets in there and clicks just fine, and the amber light comes on in the battery indicator on the front as if everything’s OK and it’s just charging.
Update! I didn’t notice earlier, but the battery light gets blinky after a while. Then if I take it back out and put it back in, it turns solid for a little while, then reverts back to blinky.
What happens if you unplug it?
Try unplugging it and see if you get 5 minutes if run time or a few hours.
If you only get a few minutes (or nothing at all) I would return the battery. If you get a couple of hours but the battery meter isn’t correct, I would guess the 3rd party battery is lacking some circutry that the old one had that sent back info about how much charge was left.
That makes me angry and look dumb, because yesterday, I swear I didn’t even get 15 seconds after leaving it plugged in all day. I left it plugged in all night and now the battery icon is full when I pull the AC adapter out.Do you think there some sort of firmware update somewhere to fix the blinky battery light problem? I actually don’t have time today to test the battery life because with the new 4400mAh battery, it could be well over an hour of battery!
I checked the wall connection, and it’s OK. The other battery charges fine, and the computer will show that it’s on AC power when plugged in, and I don’t even know what you’re talking about when you say wall to transformer (due to my electricity ignorance), so I’ll assume that that part’s OK.
Is this a known problem with Toshiba Satellite? I have the same problem only about 20 minutes of charge on a fully charged battery. Will a new battery fix this?
From what I read, these had a really shitty battery life to begin with. Like 1.5 hours shitty. And he’s had this computer for a couple of years, plugged in ALWAYS!, so it’s natural that his battery life would have degraded.
The wire comes out of the wall and plugs into a box about half the size of a brick***, then another wire comes out of the box and plugs into the computer. That box is a transformer (yeah, I know, there’s more then just a transformer in there).
***check the connection going into the box (and the others as well)