Laptop Battery seems to have died

[patrickj]

I have a Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop that is about 2.5 years old. The battery does not seem to hold a charge anymore. The laptop is a secondary machine I use to cruise the web and read email with while I am on my couch. It is always plugged into power and I never thought about removing the battery. The battery is Lithium Ion and has a small button on the back side with several LED's that show charge level of the battery when the button is pressed. I had used the laptop on battery about two months ago, but now the battery seems to be done. When the battery is inserted into the laptop and runnung on the AC adapter, the Windows XP charge meter/plug in the systray shows that the battery is charging and has a 0% charge.

Two questions;

Is there a way to reset/discharge the battery?
If the answer to the above is no, am I SOL with this battery? A replacement is kinda pricey.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer...

 

[MaestroQuark]

Those LEDs on the battery ... if your battery has a button hit it and see if they blink. If they are blinking, it means your battery's dead. (Well, I know this works for C500s/C510s, I'm not sure about Inspirons).

You should consider yourself lucky My school gives all freshman Dell laptops, and last year we had about a 50% failure rate for the batteries. That was with laptops only 9 months old at most.

 

[KenGr]

Notebook battery life is two to four years depending on how lucky you are. In the old days some people used to revive batteries somewhat by dropping a few feet onto the floor, charging for days steady, etc. I don't think any of this is too effective with Litium batteries. Do a massive search for batteries on the Internet and you can save some money. You'll find some places a bit cheaper than others.

 

[patrickj]

Originally posted by: MaestroQuark
Those LEDs on the battery ... if your battery has a button hit it and see if they blink. If they are blinking, it means your battery's dead. (Well, I know this works for C500s/C510s, I'm not sure about Inspirons).

You should consider yourself lucky My school gives all freshman Dell laptops, and last year we had about a 50% failure rate for the batteries. That was with laptops only 9 months old at most.

None of the LED's light up when I push the button.

 

[sechs]

The problem I found, of which I was not previously aware, is when you run plugged in with the battery, the computer doesn't trickle charge the battery. It waits until it leaks a certain amount of charge and then charges it, using up a charge cycle. Eventually, you use up the charge cycles of the battery, and it leaks itself into oblivion. I have a perfectly dead battery on an Inspiron over here because of that.

 

[MaestroQuark]

No lights means it's 100% dead - no charge to even tell you how much charge there is or if it's malfunctioning.

You try leaving it plugged in without the laptop on? Try it overnight, if the battery LEDs change then it is at least charging somewhat ...