Replaced 6 year old Samsung battery on 12 year old Packard bell today.

 

The old battery was showing the usual symptoms i.e. suddenly dropping its charged state, whilst in use, from 90% to 10% in a matter of seconds and initiating lots of BSODs. And the new battery has cured all that.

 

What was interesting, when I examined the event log, was that the old battery had been generating lots of disk corruption error reports as well as BSODs. That would be fine in normal circumstances, but the Hard Disk on this machine is Solid State.

 

Surprised me, as I wouldn't have thought that the variation in the old failing battery output would be sufficient to corrupt an SSD device. But it did.

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had some odd issues with an old HP with an SSD and crocked battery, might be similar.

 

I've always wondered why there isn't a market for battery blanks. Loads of people use laptops on AC all the time would be good if you could take the battery out and shove in a blanking plate.

Some machines though won't run without the battery there on AC. Dell springs to mind

Some machines though won't run without the battery there on AC. Dell springs to mind

Our dell runs without the battery in place and has done for quite a few years now

 

I had some odd issues with an old HP with an SSD and crocked battery, might be similar.

 

I've always wondered why there isn't a market for battery blanks. Loads of people use laptops on AC all the time would be good if you could take the battery out and shove in a blanking plate.

 

Only takes a decent knife and some wire cutters to remove the cells from the battery pack.

Some machines though won't run without the battery there on AC. Dell springs to mind

 

Agreed, years ago I had a perfectly decent Compaq laptop that became useless when the battery died as it wouldnt work - even on mains - unless there was a good battery pack installed.

Replaced 6 year old Samsung battery on 12 year old Packard bell today.

 

The old battery was showing the usual symptoms i.e. suddenly dropping its charged state, whilst in use, from 90% to 10% in a matter of seconds and initiating lots of BSODs. And the new battery has cured all that.

 

What was interesting, when I examined the event log, was that the old battery had been generating lots of disk corruption error reports as well as BSODs. That would be fine in normal circumstances, but the Hard Disk on this machine is Solid State.

 

Surprised me, as I wouldn't have thought that the variation in the old failing battery output would be sufficient to corrupt an SSD device. But it did.

 

Nick

 

I would expect to see them errors in event viewer given the battery were in that state.

 

My thought on what caused these were voltage drops etc - The battery not being able to deliver power to all those components at a constant level so hardware were getting less power which were triggering events in the viewer and also causing BSOD 

I have been using it quite a lot the last few days both on the  new battery only and AC mains and its been fine.

 

What I have noticed is that there seems to be a break in the AC mains cable at a point just before it enters the adapter plug (Which seats in the back of the computer). If you twiddle the cable once whilst the AC mains is on,  then the charging light, which usually flashes alternate  amber and green when charging, flicks over to  constant green only. Twiddle it again and its back to amber/green flashes. So possibly another little job there cutting back the supply cable and re-fitting a new female jack-plug adapter. 

 

Tonights job is replacing the NVRAM coin battery holder. The plastic surround has broken off the edge of the original surface mount device so that it won't hold the battery in-place without having a gash piece of plastic rammed between it and the case to keep the battery down. If you knock the thing the battery usually flies out which means that when the main battery goes flat I'm losing the NVRAM values in the BIOS. I'm not brave enough to re-solder a new surface mount holder into the main board, so I've purchased some remote battery holders, which arrived today. At least one of them has a suitable design and works ! So, I'll just solder the wires coming out of it to the respective  metal parts on the older surface mounted holder. If all goes well, job should be done.

 

Nick

 

Postscript.

 

Lucky for me that the new battery turned up promptly - I needed the laptop to do a VDCS scan on the motor early Wednesday, before I took it into the Dealer's for them to complete the MOT (Which they should have done on Monday when the car was serviced).