# bad laptop battery question.



## Draconas (Jul 10, 2011)

I have an Acer aspire 5315 laptop running 24/7 (not everyday use) and it's battery is weird.

Backtrack: I carried the laptop on to play music while I walked to the library (5-10 minute walk) and I think the winter/ summer cycles weakened the plastic battery case, so there was a hole in the case. I took a soldering iron and some spare plastic and melted it back together, then later taped it shut when that seal broke too.

What it does now is that HWMonitor says it's 70% worn, when running off of it, it'll start at 95% then around 80% it'll jump to 30% then go on it's marry little way (run time is 5 minutes until hibernate kicks in).

Now as to what im thinking caused that, the heat from the soldering iron possibly burned the wires going to one or two cells.

Point of this thread you may ask is, what do  you think causes the battery to jump from 80% to 30% instantly? And to throw this out there, don't tell me to get a new one :/


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## Andy Nonimose (Jul 10, 2011)

Get a new one. :V

Possible causes of rechargeable life loss:
Memory Effect
Heat damage
Hard accelerations (and the sudden stop!)
Age/Material deterioration


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## Draconas (Jul 10, 2011)

Andy Nonimose said:


> Get a new one. :V
> 
> Possible causes of rechargeable life loss:
> Memory Effect
> ...


 
Memory effect?


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## Runefox (Jul 10, 2011)

There is no discernible memory effect with li-ion.

What does happen, though, is that cells within the battery can shut down as a safety measure when overheating or if there's another failure. This is permanent (except in rare cases), and a safety precaution. Without it, li-ion batteries have the tendency to explode instead upon failure, which, well, take your pick: Fire or lower battery life.  Also, li-ion does degrade over time, and depends on the charge. As Ye Olde Wiki Paedia says, "A Standard (Cobalt) Li-ion cell that is full most of the time at 25 Â°C (77 Â°F) irreversibly loses approximately 20% capacity per year."

Anyway, you said not to say so, but you do need a new battery. That said, the reason it's going from 80% to 30% is because Windows calibrates its battery meter based on the charge/discharge history of the battery. When it suddenly goes from what it thinks is a full charge to less than half, Windows basically goes "oops" and off we go. If you really want to test it to see what's going on, you can try a Linux LiveCD. If your notebook is supported properly (it should be), you should be able to see the entire charge/discharge cycle in graph form, and see the rated capacity and current capacity of the battery.


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 10, 2011)

...You're using a laptop as a freaking Walkman???


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## CannotWait (Jul 10, 2011)

My laptop does the same thing... you have to get either a new battery or charger every other month...


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## Runefox (Jul 10, 2011)

Ohh, yeah, I totally missed the soldering iron and the laptop-as-a-walkman bit. Quite honestly, I'm surprised the fans and HDD are still in one piece, let alone the battery.


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## Draconas (Jul 10, 2011)

Everything in the lappy is fine since I take it apart bit by bit once a month for cleaning, done that the day I got it.


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 10, 2011)

Can I ask you what posessed you to take a soldering iron to use it to melt scrap plastic into a hole that materialized on the external shell of a Lithium Ion battery, Li-Ion batteries being of the most explosive kind of rechargable batteries?

Hell, even 'Soldering iron as plastic melting tool' is a pretty stupid idea on it's own.

On top of that, you disassemble the laptop once a MONTH?  They arn't designed to be assembled on such a regular basis.  That in itself could stress components and the shell to reach their failure points prematurely.


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## Draconas (Jul 11, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> Can I ask you what posessed you to take a soldering iron to use it to melt scrap plastic into a hole that materialized on the external shell of a Lithium Ion battery, Li-Ion batteries being of the most explosive kind of rechargable batteries?
> 
> Hell, even 'Soldering iron as plastic melting tool' is a pretty stupid idea on it's own.
> 
> On top of that, you disassemble the laptop once a MONTH?  They arn't designed to be assembled on such a regular basis.  That in itself could stress components and the shell to reach their failure points prematurely.


 
I melted plastic because I didn't want tape on it, which I ended up with, and yes, I dissemble every computer for cleaning every month, that laptop loved for 7 years.


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## Runefox (Jul 11, 2011)

Seven years? Time for a new laptop. That battery can't possibly still hold even half a full charge by now.

Also, soldering iron + li-ion battery = Explosion. You got lucky this is the only thing that went wrong.


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## Namba (Jul 11, 2011)

Draconas said:


> I melted plastic because I didn't want tape on it, which I ended up with, and yes, I dissemble every computer for cleaning every month, that laptop loved for 7 years.


 
Seven years is fucking good, but also when you should get a new one; that's really good for a laptop.


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## Draconas (Jul 11, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Seven years? Time for a new laptop. That battery can't possibly still hold even half a full charge by now.
> 
> Also, soldering iron + li-ion battery = Explosion. You got lucky this is the only thing that went wrong.



 knew the battery is explosive, didn't leave the iron on it longer than needed.



luti-kriss said:


> Seven years is fucking good, but also when you should get a new one; that's really good for a laptop.


 
Not like im really in need of mobile computing now, it's a steam and http file server now, has been for awhile now.


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## Onnes (Jul 11, 2011)

A soldering iron is rarely going to be effective in joining plastic due to the way it burns the stuff. If you want to patch a hole using plastic you are better off just using superglue--especially since it won't cause a Li-ion conflagration.


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## FF_CCSa1F (Jul 11, 2011)

Runefox said:


> That said, the reason it's going from 80% to 30% is because Windows calibrates its battery meter based on the charge/discharge history of the battery. When it suddenly goes from what it thinks is a full charge to less than half, Windows basically goes "oops" and off we go.


 
I would just like to point out that Windows plays no role in this; it is the management circuitry inside the battery that keeps check on the capacity of it and how the meter moves. Sometimes, however, if the battery doesn't report the remaining run-time directly (as many low-end units don't), Windows will try to calculate the remaining runtime. Usually about as successfully as it calculates the remaining time for file transfers.


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## Draconas (Jul 12, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> I would just like to point out that Windows plays no role in this; it is the management circuitry inside the battery that keeps check on the capacity of it and how the meter moves. Sometimes, however, if the battery doesn't report the remaining run-time directly (as many low-end units don't), Windows will try to calculate the remaining runtime. Usually about as successfully as it calculates the remaining time for file transfers.


 
Speaking of file transfers, I use Teracopy :V love that shit.


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## FF_CCSa1F (Jul 12, 2011)

Draconas said:


> Speaking of file transfers, I use Teracopy :V love that shit.


 
Essential on <=Windows XP. On Vista and up, I can't say that I find it necessary. They really did improve the file transfer dialogue in Vista.


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## Runefox (Jul 12, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> Essential on <=Windows XP. On Vista and up, I can't say that I find it necessary. They really did improve the file transfer dialogue in Vista.


 Yeah. With a huge copy, Windows XP says "whoops, can't copy this file", boom, whole operation fails. Vista and up, it lets you skip or retry instead of just killing the whole operation.


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## AshleyAshes (Jul 12, 2011)

Why would you even think that melting plastic was a good idea.  Computers are typically made of ABS or PVC plastics.  Have you -ever- heard of anyone using heat to melt the stuff together?  No.  Hell, even in plumbing, they use chemical cements that cause the plastics to CHEMICALLY melt and bond to each other.  They arn't using flux and a torch to do the job. |:


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## Draconas (Jul 12, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> Why would you even think that melting plastic was a good idea.  Computers are typically made of ABS or PVC plastics.  Have you -ever- heard of anyone using heat to melt the stuff together?  No.  Hell, even in plumbing, they use chemical cements that cause the plastics to CHEMICALLY melt and bond to each other.  They arn't using flux and a torch to do the job. |:


 
Because I usually fix crap by melting it back together? Ive fixed other plastics by doing that


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