Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Dell laptop dies when unplugged but the battery appears fully charged



To expand on what I mean, I checked the voltages of each cell in the battery pack and they each read about 4.0v ea (6 green Li-ion cells in a 11.1v 53WH battery) and the total voltage reads 12.4v.



At this point I'm thinking that the problem lie in how the laptop uses the battery though I'm not sure how to test this.



Once the power cable is unplugged, the laptop will remain on but the built in battery light turns orange. It abruptly shuts down after about 10 minutes so it is using the battery to an extent.



This is a Dell Inspiron 6400.


Answer




If the battery voltage shows it really has been depleted when the indicator turns orange, than it would seem that the battery is at the end of its life. The amp hour rating of laptop batteries decrease with each charge/discharge cycle, and it seems that this battery has reached the point of being measured in "amp minutes". Sadly, sometimes a battery will reach this point rather suddenly. And when it does, its time to bite the bullet and get a new battery.


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