Hello! Well my dad just bought a Laptop for his personal use about 3 weeks ago and yesterday he forgot the Laptop plugged in to the outlet for all day (about 10 hours) I told him there shouldn't be any problems, that day I received 2 GB of memory I ordered online and I just unplugged the Laptop and using ESD I open the bay and installed the memory, well my surprise when I turn it on was the battery at 3%, I was like: oh well he didn't plug the cord well or something and I plug it to the wall and the battery run out to 0%, I started to worry because it's not normal, then the battery status says "plugged in, not charging" all this is under Vista. I tried to change that but after 3 hours of being there looking for sometweaks to change that status of "not charging" I almost give up, when I took out the battery and then put it back and it start charging up to 100% in a couple of hours, I said well it's ok now, it was just the battery not properly assembled, today I turn on the laptop and it was on 0% again! I was like WTH is going on!! any ideas? suggestions? should I take it back to the store? I don't want to get there saying "oh the battery dies" and then end up being a software issue or something, please point me in the right direction, I will really appreciate your help!

Batteries don't last forever. They are called consumables... Purchase another battery and try it

the thing is if the laptop is only 3 weeks old it shouldn't have a dying battery already

take it back to the store, sounds like a hardware issue to me

Since it sounds like a new computer, contact Tech support.

Check the connectors located at the battery space in the Toshiba. They get bent out of shap just enough to stop working.

Also, the power supply could be bad.

Toshiba, along with everybody else has been having a lot of trouble with batteries since they had them all revised to avoid the "hot" or "exploding" battery issue of a few months ago.

But as TMagic50 says, they are consumables.

Insist. Demand, that your reseller make good. Do not take the unit back to the seller without removing that new battery.

And remember that sometimes bad memory will give you this condition.

Consumables that are not meant to last 3 weeks, sometimes to give an opinion you need to read the whole post.

The problem with this unit is that I bought it at best buy where there's only 14-day return policy, so now I have to deal with Toshiba directly.

It's weird (for me) that you mention the memory could give a condition like this, because I never seen this happen, but just to make sure I will put back the old memory tomorrow and see if that fix the problem, I just heard Toshiba recall another 10,000 batteries but that doesn't include my model, I'll try the memory thing later and if that doesn't solve anything I'll be contacting Toshiba, Thank you for your time and advise to all of you!

raybay, memory never gives that bad condition. battery communicates with EC/KBC and southbridge via SMBus. OS reads smbus data from those chips and show you values of charging/discharging.

Laptop batteries, or for that fact, any battery can be "bad" out of the box. Considering that this laptop is a Toshiba, do as Raybay suggested and contact Toshiba tech support. I suspect that the laptop is defective. This is not unusual for Toshiba products

tmagic650, well, it depends on what model of toshiba's laptop
for instance; L20,L30 models have very poor quality.

I'll repair them but I don't recommend Toshiba to any one, regardless of model

Well, maybe I choose a wrong brand but due some recommendations I tought Toshiba will be much better over Compaq or Acer, since those where the only options for entry levels I have around here.
This Laptop is for my dad's use, pretty much basic web surfing, watch a DVD or music stuff, tough this Laptop won't fit my needs, it will fit his needs. Besides I feel a got a pretty good deal $399 for 1.6celeron 512MB RAM, 80GB, DVD-RW, Vista Basic, i just upgrade for $75 to 2GB of ram.

However the battery issue is making me feel a waste my money and time on this system.
Tmagic, What issues you had with Toshiba?

Toshiba is the problem

I have a 1 year old Toshiba A-135, the battery is dead now, I'll never ever buy Toshiba again, the hard drive was broken within the first month of use, and when I asked for support they said they had to keep my computer for 4-6 weeks and didn't offer a replacement.

The battery might be old now, but I've had longer life batteries, I'll go back to Dell.

Well, it's been a long time! over a year since my lst post on this thread, but well let me tell you what happened.

I managed to get rid of this laptop selling it to a friend, so my dad got a new Core2Duo Fujitsu and so far it's kicking great.

The battery was replaced from Toshiba at no cost in a local shop within 2 miles of my home, the downside was they said the have batteries backordered and took a month to replace my battery. Too bad because I hardly recommend Toshiba

Sorry about your bad luck. Do you mean "hardly" or "heartily"
Most notebook batteries only last about a year nowadays.
Toshiba hard drives are among the most reliable laptop hard drives made... exceeded only by the Seagate drives.
Any cheap laptop will give you trouble.
I wouldn't give a dime for a fujitsu, but IBM Lenovo is now using Fujitsu hard drives in all their recent high-end laptops.

The Toshiba A-135 must have been treated roughly, by dropping, bumping, falling like a lot of laptop computers... The new Toshiba's look good too

This Toshiba battery won't even last three weeks when it failed, and I sold it after 6 months of being working ok after they reaplced it.

BTW, my dad took good care of it and never had a problem with any other components but the battery. (this was my dad's Laptop, not mine)

Fujitsu's have worked awesome with me, I just don't like their designs and speakers but other features are great (spill resistance KB, shock proof HDD, etc).

I don't know about new toshibas, they look cool but haven't had the chance to use one.

Only true in a few models. Toshiba uses several different manufacturers. It is a model by model issue.
But Toshiba has slipped badly overall. It is a tough market for those who cannot compete.
Toshiba, once a proud major manufacturer, no longer owns its own parts and repair sites in the US. Warranty repairs take weeks or months.

I have a Toshiba laptop here that has no video either internal or external. The young owner got mad one day and pounded the keyboard with his fist...I haven't had any luck reflowing solder