Laptop power problems

[Xjiminycrickett]

im having trouble with my laptop power supply. just upgraded to xp pro. everytime i unplug the ac cord from the laptop, it turns off. im not sure what to do. it doesnt turn on even when not plugged into the ac supply. maybe the batteries dead? it worked before i upgraded. can anyone help me?

 

[Ididmyc600]

im having trouble with my laptop power supply. just upgraded to xp pro. everytime i unplug the ac cord from the laptop, it turns off. im not sure what to do. it doesnt turn on even when not plugged into the ac supply. maybe the batteries dead? it worked before i upgraded. can anyone help me?

Hi

I doubt that the upgrade has caused this, maybe the battery is stuffed take it out and put a meter on the pins to see if it has any voltage,

Regards

 

[richie7000]

did it work fine b4..wen laptops are shipped sometimes to prevent battery life loss they install a little swicth that disables the battery. if this were the case u jst need to find it usually located to the top let side of th lappy, if not so then it is possible that either the battery is dead or there is bad continuity between the battery and its terminals.

 

[Xjiminycrickett]

still havin trouble

im running a compaq presario 2100. i cant find any switch or the batttery that you are talking about. and my batery has a little voltage meter that if i press a button it should show if there is any voltage on it. Im not too sure if i need a new battery b/c it did work before. The only thing i could think of is that the AC is not charging the battery. In this case i think i would be screwed b/c always having the laptop atached to the power cord kinda defeats the purpose of having a laptop.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

You need to rightclick anywhere on the desktop, select Properties, go to the Screensaver tab, and select the Power button. Check how the settings in all the shown tabs are set.
In your Control Panel you probably also have a separate Battery or Power icon, check those settings as well.
You may also need to install specific Compaq sotware for your battery management.

 

[Ididmyc600]

You need to rightclick anywhere on the desktop, select Properties, go to the Screensaver tab, and select the Power button. Check how the settings in all the shown tabs are set.
In your Control Panel you probably also have a separate Battery or Power icon, check those settings as well.
You may also need to install specific Compaq sotware for your battery management.

I think he said that it wont boot at all with just the battery in, this isnt OS related, and is definately a battery fault.

You see if you leave a lappy battery in over time it will finally fail, this is normal , I found this advice regarding batteries

If you are going to actually run on battery often, then just use it
however you wish. Note that extreme discharges (below 15% or 20%) will
shorten the life, and that Lithium batteries have a finite life (number
of charge-discharge cycles), after which they become pretty much useless
(the number varies, but it's in the mid-hundreds). It's not clear to me
how "partial" charges and discharges figure into this.

If you are operating on AC power most of the time, I'd charge the
battery fully, use the computer on battery down to perhaps 25%, charge
it back up to about 60%-70% and then TAKE IT OUT OF THE LAPTOP and store
it at a nice comfortable temperature (climate controlled room temp).
Some people will recommend refrigeration, which is ok as long as you
don't freeze it, but I think that the difference between room temp. and
refrigeration (which is theoretically better) is not significant as a
practical matter (I have decade old batteries stored at normal room temp
that are nearly as good as new).

I buy, sell, repair and refurbish laptops and see hundreds of batteries
per year. My one comment to you is that the very worst thing that you
can do is to leave the battery in the laptop when the laptop is running
on AC power (plugged into the wall) for long periods of time. We are
not sure whether it's overcharging or heat (and it's probably both to
varying degrees on a model-by-model basis), but this will very often
destroy a perfectly good $200 battery in 9 to 24 months. Otherwise,
these batteries can last from 5 years to more than a decade.

[If you do store it, some use every 3 to 6 months is highly desireable,
but 1 or 2 charge - discharge cycles is all that you need.]

Regards

 

[RealBlackStuff]

I don't agree with your argumentation.
If the battery worked OK before XP, that battery is still useable now!
Once the laptop is up and running (with or w/o battery) he needs to check/install/set the battery/AC management, which may need Compaq drivers.
Once that's done, the battery should work again.

 

[Ididmyc600]

I don't agree with your argumentation.
If the battery worked OK before XP, that battery is still useable now!
Once the laptop is up and running (with or w/o battery) he needs to check/install/set the battery/AC management, which may need Compaq drivers.
Once that's done, the battery should work again.

Hi

So your saying that the OS can magically change how a laptop see's it's battery, and can turn off the laptops access to it...without so much as a warning....so if the laptop is supplied without an OS it wont see the battery until an OS is installed and the PM drivers installed

Yeah right, he says it wont even turn on, so unless the OS has told the BIOS to ignore the battery completley then the OS has no bearing on it whatsoever.

OK Poster set your BIOS to default, then try it,

Batteries can and do fail, if the poster hasn't used it for a while and may not have noticed the declining state of the cells until he suddenly tries it and finds it dead.

Regards

 

[Sculptor33]

Xjiminycrickett - did this get resolved?

I am having the same or similar problem.
I have a Compaq 2140 that is a couple years old and have recently moved to WinXP Home Edition.. the one that came with the system originally.
Since that time the laptop freezes if I start from battery, or unplug the a/c.. within about 5 min.
I have a number of batteries and have the same problem regardless.
So troubleshooting being the process of elimination and diagnosis, it would appear that the OS seems to have some glitch that is causing this to occur.
This doesn't discount the fact that there could be a hardware problem, but I think the OS and some tool that interacts with the Power Management software, or the Pwr Mgmt software itself, is a possible culprit.

As to the statement:
"So your saying that the OS can magically change how a laptop see's it's battery, and can turn off the laptops access to it...without so much as a warning....so if the laptop is supplied without an OS it wont see the battery until an OS is installed and the PM drivers installed"

I would have to say.. there is nothing magical about it, except for the fact that the unknown would often appear as magic until it is discovered to be otherwise. If you believe Microsoft products don't have some unexplained facets and glitches, I think you should revisit the history of all updates from Microsoft and see how many have had to be performed since the release of any version of thier OS... an ongoing process.

All that being said, I would like to hear from the person that originally posted to determine if they figured out a resolution.. or from anyone that would have useful insight or ideas of how I could proceed to resolve this issue on my laptop.

Thanks all, for your time and input.

Sculptor

 

[Sculptor33]

Additional TS details

Now that my attention is on the problem... here is an interesting observation.
I just put in a new battery that I hadn't charged yet.
Waited for 100%.
Booted from A/C.
Unplugged A/C.
Didn't open any apps for 8 min. Still operational.

Started opening apps local to the system.. no external communication required.. (i.e. IE, or any other Internet connected apps)
No problems.. opened Word, Acrobat, Palm Desktop, and a couple others.

I open a local network drive to exercise the Wireless PCMCIA incase the power management is the problem on that device.
Opening and closing files on different network locations didn't seem to be a problem

So I open a browser.
Everything looks pretty good.. for about 2 min. Then the inevitable freeze.

So at this time, I would have to say that there is something going on during connection to the internet that is causing a freeze when on battery power that doesnt occur otherwise.

Anyone have any ideas??

By the way, this has occured with both IE and Mozilla Firefox.. havent tried Netscape yet.. but who knows.

Any help is welcome

Sculptor

 

[Tmagic650]

You need to rightclick anywhere on the desktop, select Properties, go to the Screensaver tab, and select the Power button. Check how the settings in all the shown tabs are set.
In your Control Panel you probably also have a separate Battery or Power icon, check those settings as well.
You may also need to install specific Compaq sotware for your battery management.

I agree with RBS... XP integrates itself with the laptops battery charging and function. Check the power settings mentioned above

 

[Sculptor33]

More on same prob

I agree with RBS... XP integrates itself with the laptops battery charging and function. Check the power settings mentioned above

Unfortunately the power settings are fine and I even turned off standby for all profiles too ensue that it isnt causing any problem from that mode.

I originally installed the utility from Compaq/HP that would appear to be the one for this issue. Description as follows:
-------------------------------------
Release Date: 2004-07-31 Version: 5.00 F

Description

This contains the Notebook Utilities. These utilities help with calibrating the battery, quick locking the system, and supporting wireless functions.

NOTE: Before installing this new version, uninstall any earlier version of Notebook Utilities and restart the computer. Otherwise, the wireless functions will not work.

PURPOSE: Routine

OPERATING SYSTEM(S):
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit Professional
Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit Home Edition

Fixes

- Fixes an issue with the HP CI.SYS driver that resulted in a "blue screen" error.

---------------------------------------

Now, I haven't seen a "blue screen" error in XP yet, but perhaps they are using it as a generic Windows failure term.

Loading and working with XP has been a pain in the ****, configuration of wireless utilities the same. So I am not inclined to uninstall and reinstall the same software that exists on the drive unless I am pretty well assured that it is going to resolve the issue.

If there is a tie between the "HP CI.SYS driver" noted, and TCP/IP communications for internet connectivity then I could see doing it. Otherwise I am looking for a reason that this happens only when passing data over the net.

Thank you for the recommendation though.

Still wondering if the original poster ever resolved their issue.

Keep em comin'

Sculptor

 

[Sculptor33]

Final Solution

Thanks again to anyone that has offered any help to date.

I do have a final resolution to the problem of laptop freeze when a/c power is removed from my Compaq Presario 2140us / 2100 with a full charge and fully operational battery source. Just to restate, WinXP Home is the OS that this problem was occuring on, and it seemed to be associated somehow to being connected to the internet via a browser.

The short answer is... change to Win2k.

The long answer is more interesting.. Compaq/HP distributed WinXP Home with this laptop, but I had a preference to Win2k back then and replaced the factory installed OS with Win2k.
It wasn't until the last 6 months that I chose to load WinXP Home on all systems within my home network and "upgraded?" the OS accordingly.
Over the past 6 months I have found that, while I like some of the XP functionality.. in general I don't like it and have had nothing but compatability and network problems since making it the network OS of choice.
As a result I have replaced my laptop OS with Win2k and have since had no more problems related to system freezing when a/c is removed.. regardless of what I am doing.. internet.. wirelss pcmcia.. 10/100 connected... whatever.

I have not installed all security updates from microsoft at this time, but have installed all HP updates for the laptop itself.. of course I had to use an XP driver in one case since there wasnt one for the Win2k version.. but that didn't cause any problems.


Sculptor