Is this battery bad????

[steppinthrax]

I guess this is a two part question and I want to ask it before I go further.

I'm fixing a friends laptop. It's a Pentium 4 Toshiba Satellite. He complains of it all of a sudden cutting off for no reason.

I fully charged the battery last night and took it to work this morning. I suspected the battery is bad or maybe some overheating issue. I loaded windows and opened the power management application in the control panel. I saw it stated that it had A/C power and I immediately unplugged the AC. The battery showed up at 100% and I just watched it. For the next couple of mins it went 100, 99, 98, 96...... I guess 10 to 15mins have past right now and I see it at 84%. So I imagine the battery is bad (correct me if I'm wrong).

I guess I was curious is there any windows application that will give you an indication of battery life (not how much power you have but actually life of the battery).

I'm also curious could other things be wrong (i.e. voltage regulator pulling too much current. Power settings set way too high ect......

 

[steppinthrax]

UPDATE

 

[steppinthrax]

UPDATE

Looks like something else is up.

Right when the battery got to 54% I pluged in the AC adaptor. A couple of mins after that the laptop all of a sudden cut off.

I started the laptop again with the AC adaptor plugged in and it loaded windows and again all of a sudden cut off. (The AC adaptor was plugged in).

Now I'm lost as to what the problem could be.

I just removed the battery and am trying it right now with just AC power and no battery.


Any suggesttions.....

 

[steppinthrax]

UPDATE

Looks like it wasen't the battery after all

Just spoke to somebody in our hardware department. He said toshiba's it's commonly a dirty heatsink.

I found an access port underneath the laptop where you can access the heatsink. I pulled it off and removed the heatsink.

IT HAD A CAKE OF DUST DIRECTLY ON THE INTAKE END.

I removed it and now it's no longer cutting off. As a matter of fact the fans are not running as much and not as high speed.

 

[RajunCajun]

There is a common problem with Toshiba notebooks where in the AC adapter circuitry breaks the soldered connection AT THE MOTHERBOARD. If you google the problem you'll find info plus how to repair it, which involves disassembly. When you search make sure to put in the model number of notebook.

I had a couple years old 3.4ghz P4 Toshiba high-end given to me. Looked ok - nothing broken, but wouldn't startup. Didn't want to spend $$$ for a battery, but I was able to find another AC adapter for ~$25 to try. Once plugged in it started charging and came on - I though this is great. But after 10 mins or so it stopped charging. So I returned the adapter for refund and gutted it out, salvaging the memory, harddrive, display, etc.

Your search will give you a lot of info, including step-by-step procedure plus the schematics you'll need.

 

[steppinthrax]

Originally posted by: RajunCajun
There is a common problem with Toshiba notebooks where in the AC adapter circuitry breaks the soldered connection AT THE MOTHERBOARD. If you google the problem you'll find info plus how to repair it, which involves disassembly. When you search make sure to put in the model number of notebook.

I had a couple years old 3.4ghz P4 Toshiba high-end given to me. Looked ok - nothing broken, but wouldn't startup. Didn't want to spend $$$ for a battery, but I was able to find another AC adapter for ~$25 to try. Once plugged in it started charging and came on - I though this is great. But after 10 mins or so it stopped charging. So I returned the adapter for refund and gutted it out, salvaging the memory, harddrive, display, etc.

Your search will give you a lot of info, including step-by-step procedure plus the schematics you'll need.

I as a matter of fact did notice that online. But It didnt' make any sense because the battery had a charge in it at the time during the cut off. Also if I wiggled the power cord (as it says in the tutorial) with no battery in there and just AC power it should just cut off but didn't. It's been running so far for 2 hours no with cut offs since I cleaned out the heatsink...

 

[dementedlemur]

I've found this to be a common trend among P4 laptops since they run so hot. A good thorough cleaning every 6mos or so and an application of thermal grease instead of the factory thermal pad does wonders for them.