Trick windows into detecting a full battery

[Ivan Ivanov Ivanovski]

Hello!

I have a unique problem, I was using my laptop recently and I have completely drained the battery without a milivolt left in it. Since then however it just wont charge the battery any more, I tried a whole combo of plugging and unplugging the battery while on, off and so on. The battery wont charge under Windows or any other OS, like Ubuntu and FreeBSD.

The last resort I figured would be to upgrade the BIOS, since it controls if the battery gets charged or not, but the problem is I cannot install the BIOS without atleast a 10% charge I think, the update program just wont run otherwise. I have tried to force run it in CMD and even under FreeDOS, but it won't install for nothing. All I could do is get the BIOS file from the .exe, but I cant apply it without the main program.

So my question is is there a way to fool windows into thinking it has a working battery? I haven't really found anything on the topic by Googleing.

Thank you.

[Arika]

what about just outright taking the battery out? if there's no battery to look for then it should request it to be charged. unless any power input is routed through the battery before being distributed out to your system

[Ivan Ivanov Ivanovski]

Just now, Sierra Fox said:

what about just outright taking the battery out? if there's no battery to look for then it should request it to be charged. unless any power input is routed through the battery before being distributed out to your system

I tried running with a battery, without it, plugging it in while running on AC, numerous combinations that might fix it. I have also reinstalled the battery drivers to no avail.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Windows isn't responsible for charging the battery. It can tell the % and whether it is charging or not, but doesn't actually manage the charging of the battery. The BIOS doesn't either, it should be managed by low level chips that you basically have no access to modify, hence why a battery can charge even when the PC is not turned on. Updating the BIOS shouldn't change anything for charging the battery as AFAIK, it doesn't control it at all. 

 

If the battery is not charging, I'd expect either the battery is dead or there is something wrong with the chips managing charging. I'd suggest looking at your laptop's manual to see if there is a button combination on boot to force reset the chips managing charging. I know that MacBooks have keys to press to reset the SMC, I've had to do it several times when swapping out batteries on Macs. 

[Trustadz]

I have almost the same problem. It all started after I tried a charger with a way lower capacity (9V 0,3A instead of 19V 16,6A) laptop wouldn't charge anymore, won't boot on net power or whatever. Just installed a new charging port figuring that could help... It didn't.

 

Thanks for the SMC tip, I'm going to check if that works in my case, will report back when i find something.

[Trustadz]

2 hours ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Windows isn't responsible for charging the battery. It can tell the % and whether it is charging or not, but doesn't actually manage the charging of the battery. The BIOS doesn't either, it should be managed by low level chips that you basically have no access to modify, hence why a battery can charge even when the PC is not turned on. Updating the BIOS shouldn't change anything for charging the battery as AFAIK, it doesn't control it at all. 

 

If the battery is not charging, I'd expect either the battery is dead or there is something wrong with the chips managing charging. I'd suggest looking at your laptop's manual to see if there is a button combination on boot to force reset the chips managing charging. I know that MacBooks have keys to press to reset the SMC, I've had to do it several times when swapping out batteries on Macs. 

Any idea if removing the CMOS battery has the same effect in windows laptop?

[Salacious B Crum]

3 hours ago, Ivan Ivanov Ivanovski said:

Hello!

I have a unique problem, I was using my laptop recently and I have completely drained the battery without a milivolt left in it. Since then however it just wont charge the battery any more, I tried a whole combo of plugging and unplugging the battery while on, off and so on. The battery wont charge under Windows or any other OS, like Ubuntu and FreeBSD.

The last resort I figured would be to upgrade the BIOS, since it controls if the battery gets charged or not, but the problem is I cannot install the BIOS without atleast a 10% charge I think, the update program just wont run otherwise. I have tried to force run it in CMD and even under FreeDOS, but it won't install for nothing. All I could do is get the BIOS file from the .exe, but I cant apply it without the main program.

So my question is is there a way to fool windows into thinking it has a working battery? I haven't really found anything on the topic by Googleing.

Thank you.

If your having issues with the battery and not sure of its state its not recommended to flash the bios on battery you will risk bricking the mobo if it fails during the update

[Trustadz]

Couldn't find a reset button, nor a jumper so i switched out the battery and let it rest for 15 minutes. Tested the battery, just in case, and it's still fully powered. Pushed the power button for 40 seconds and reseated the battery. For me at least, it has no luck. Laptop is fully functional, except that it doesn't provide power through the power port.

 

Edit: So, i figured it out. The replacement charger I tried has the + and - reversed, so it basically fried the charging part of the mobo. No way to fix it, at least not in my capabilities. As for the OP, did you do something similar? Maybe a power outage when you were using your laptop on charger?

[Erfsh]

I had a similar problem with my old laptop. The charging indicator showed that it is fully charged but Windows was displaying around 60%. I just let it run on battery for couple of hours and it automatically fixed the problem.

I guess it is because of calibration.

 

I'd say let it discharge again and see if it helps.

[Falkentyne]

18 hours ago, Trustadz said:

Couldn't find a reset button, nor a jumper so i switched out the battery and let it rest for 15 minutes. Tested the battery, just in case, and it's still fully powered. Pushed the power button for 40 seconds and reseated the battery. For me at least, it has no luck. Laptop is fully functional, except that it doesn't provide power through the power port.

 

Edit: So, i figured it out. The replacement charger I tried has the + and - reversed, so it basically fried the charging part of the mobo. No way to fix it, at least not in my capabilities. As for the OP, did you do something similar? Maybe a power outage when you were using your laptop on charger?

What sort of fake charger did you buy that had the + and - reversed?

You didn't buy some cheapass knockoff Chinese charger, did you?

[Trustadz]

7 minutes ago, Falkentyne said:

What sort of fake charger did you buy that had the + and - reversed?

You didn't buy some cheapass knockoff Chinese charger, did you?

It was never meant to be a laptopcharger. It just happened to have the same plug. So the person figured "it'll be good"

[Falkentyne]

Ah, sorry.  Lesson learned, then.  The laptop wasn't an expensive model, was it?