Laptop battery not holding charge

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I bought a Toshiba laptop in July. For the most part, it's working well, except for one thing: periodically (yesterday was the third time) the battery loses its charge completely, even though it's always plugged in. Then, it took the better part of a day to "recharge" itself--until then, it wouldn't turn on.

Have any of you experienced this? Why might it be happening? I ordered a replacement battery (I get one free under my extended warranty), but could something else be going on?

Thanks.

The battery is the first thing to change when it will not hold a charge. A firm ware update for your toshiba is recommended if there is one available.

The only other point of failure would be the connecters that link the battery to the mother board its self.

i am sure that the battery you have now needs to be replaced

Thank you. They will have to install the new one at the store, so I will ask them to check the connectors as well.

In my experience over charging lithium ion batteries such as lap top ones is the best way to kill them, the best way to use a laptop is to charge it and then use it at least once a day while it is not plugged in until the computer asked to be put on charge.

The regular cycling of the cells stops some of the worst things happening inside the cells, also it helps to avoid overcharging.

When I have ruined laptop batteries, I have noticed that the damaged cells do not hold charge as well.

Even the newest batteries require regular charge/discharge cycles for the battery to remain healthy.

Being it's a used laptop, the prior owner might have left it plugged in all the time...ruining the battery's lifespan.

It's not used. I bought it new in July from Best Buy. My previous one (had for 7 years) didn't do this--I always left it plugged in, too.

They told me at Geek Squad that it's probably just a defective battery. Letting it drain down while working unplugged, then re-plugging it, seems to be working for now--so until the new battery arrives, I should be okay.

Thank you all for your help, though. I'll make sure to recharge/discharge the new one.

This is what I used to think.

I just bought a new laptop and went looking for the best way to preserve the battery life. What I found out was a bit disconcerting, according to the manufacturer (dell) 1. fully draining and recharging is the worst thing you can do 2. This particular battery has only 300 charge recharge cycles.

So I now have removed the battery and only install it when I really need it.

But then on further reflection I went searching and found this really helpful guide from HP
Li Ion Batteries

And this
Battery Care


Guess I can put the Battery back in.

New battery arrived today. I cannot self-service this one, so on my next day off I am taking it to Best Buy. While there, I will ask them the best way to keep the new one from dying prematurely.

Thank you all for your replies.

Took the entire thing, including the battery, to Best Buy today. Verdict: faulty power charger/plug. The battery itself is fine.

They gave me a new charger, for free. However, it turns out that I will probably need a new battery in two years, so I'll just store the one I received for free until then.

So (obviously) this computer is now charged up and fine. They also assured me that using it while plugged in did NOT damage the battery, but not to let it stay plugged in for too long after it's been fully charged.

Again, thank all of you for all of your help.

I used to work at a power tool company, and learned a bit about batteries, and much of it from a trip to a start up company whose technology ended up in Optima car batteries.

That business of fully discharging a battery was only good for Nickel-Cadmium batteries.

Any battery will loose amp-hour capacity over time and over use. I do not know of a battery technology in existence today that doesn't have this problem. This may change in the future. Anyways, my point is, don't expect to buy something battery-operated and expect it to last up on the shelf for years.

So for instance, when I bought a OBDII diagnostic tool, I got one that had no batteries in it, it gets its power from the car.

Or say you need a saw to cut wood. If you buy one that has a battery in it, don't expect the battery to be good in ten years, and don't expect to find a replacement battery worth a darn either.

That isn't to say you shouldn't buy anything with a battery in it, some things just have to, but realize you are buying something with a 'fuse'.

Something else I learned from that trip - if you don't fully charge a lead-acid battery every so often (say only 80%) it looses capacity, and life time, very quickly. You need to top it off sooner or later, that is, get to a full charge. I assume that applies to other chemistries as well.

One of the ways you can find out that your battery is loosing capacity is that it takes less time to charge up completely.

There's a website called something like "Battery University" that was written by a company that makes battery testers. One of the battery manufacturer's had a book or pamphlet about batteries, but I can't remember the company's name. Gates?

The biggest problem with li-ion batteries is that they want to explode.. that is when they are being discharged they generate heat which causes them to discharge faster which generates more heat.. a cycle that ends in flames and tears. To solve this problem all lithium batteries have more electronics in them than most scientific calculators with temperature sensors, cycle counters, hours in operation timers, complex power regulation circuits and various logic chips to interpret all that data and act accordingly.

This both presents a new menagerie of points of failure for a battery and lots of room for manufacturer exploitation. For example I had one go "bad" and reverse engineered the chips inside.. found that its internal clock had been ticking ever since the first charge cycle and reducing the length of the charge cycle accordingly and after 400 days (a couple weeks after any 1 year warranty would expire) it flipped a bit in the eeprom (its internal memory) that told the device it was plugged into "bad battery". I wiped the eeprom and set it back to factory defaults and it worked like new for another year.. until the timer went off again (prompting another reset). I replaced the device after about 2.5 years but until then I never had trouble with it otherwise.

The point is that many manufacturers will force a battery to report itself as bad even though it is fine because it lets them sell more batteries.

RELATED:

This APP 'DATA COLLECTOR' (LINK) attempts to predict the best times to recharge mobile APP batteries based on mobile device usage patterns:

(LINK): https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... acollector