Laptop battery won't charge..

[Syringer]

So I have this old laptop w/ a battery that won't hold a charge--which is perfectly understandable and something that happens to all laptops.

I end up getting a new battery then maybe 3 months ago, and that works great for a while. As a result my battery life went from about 7 minutes to a good 2 hours which is as good as the day I first got this laptop.

However now the new one won't charge up at all. When I press the button on the back to determine how many "bars" it shows, it'll never go higher than one out of 4 no matter how long it's plugged in for--contrast this to my old battery which will show all 4 bars but doesn't last at all.. so the new battery is suffering from a different sort of "symptom" than the old one.

Is there anything I can do about this then? Is it a physical thing that I can fix, or is it simply a battery that's gone bad after just 3 months?

 

[TheStu]

Well it could be the DC-in board, that is a usual culprit when it comes to weird power issues. After fixing my PowerBook's DC-In board, my battery life went from 2 minutes, to 2 hours and the system would actually turn on again, and this is on a 3 year old system (I honestly wish I was making this up).

 

[corkyg]

In this case it sounds like the charging circuit as Stu suggests. Most are integrated on the mobo and not detachable circuit boards.

Will it still run on A/C with the battery removed?

 

[Syringer]

It does..but I don't think it's the laptop, since it'll charge up one battery fully based on the bars it shows on the battery itself (albeit it only lasts 6 minutes), and the other only goes up to one bar..

 

[TheStu]

Pretty sure it is the laptop, and if the DC-In board is separate from the rest of the system, then it is usually a cheap fix, as opposed to yet another new battery which could be killed by it.

 

[santuitman]

What's the laptop? I've got an older Dell "C" series and there are actual leds built into the battey itself. Supposedly a quick press of the button on the battery will show amount of charge A press and hold will show the relative life of the battery. These leds don't seem to be accurate all the time on one of the batteries I have. I've carefully cleaned the contacts on the laptop and battery with a cotton swap and alcohol and that seems to help too. Wish I could be more helpful.

 

[Syringer]

Those are the bars that I'm referring to..on one it'll only go up to 1, the other (old one ) goes to 4.

 

[Rottie]

or the battery is bad I had same problem when they shipped me a bad one and got another one that worked just fine