Question Dead battery in HP Pavilion 17 laptop......... or IS it??!!

[shawnhalf]

Hello all... well, I would guess that my battery is completely dead but I'm just not 100% sure. Only a few weeks ago it had decent life and I was getting about 50 mins to 1 hour off it... but within the last week it has just fallen off a cliff. Gauge % indicator at lower right showing plenty of juice left and like 90 mins or so remaining, and then only 15 minutes of life then shutdown (with no warning). Then a few days later, gauge still all great and optimistic, and then maybe about 5 mins of life. Yesterday tried booting up without adapter and it finished the boot, but about 30 seconds after, shut down. Today - as soon as I unplug the AC adapter it will *immediately* shut down. (Solid amber light is showing next to adapter when plugged in. ) Odd thing is that doing a "Battery Report" via command line in Windows 10, shows no problem.... all normal voltages and wattages and such. Doing a battery test in "HP PC Hardware Diagnostics" strangely shows that the battery "passed" and the AC adapter "failed". So I don't know what to believe! lol.
Anyway, I daresay the battery is just about dead, but I'm wondering if there is some test I could do to confirm, or maybe "re-calibrate". Possibly something I can do to maybe eke out a few seconds/minutes of life on it - just enough to allow me to unplug the adapter from one location here in the house and walk over to another location and plug it right back in. Thanks all !

Cheers
Shawn

 

[stonecarver]

I don't trust how batteries are reported as far as health by the laptop or for that matter cell phones. Sure it's a gas gauge that we rely on where that battery is and when a battery is new or still healthy the reading are the most accurate.

But as the batteries near the end of life boy do those same gauges lie.

A volt meter is you best test on the battery for a true reading.

I just had to order a new battery for my phone and I would plug it in and watch it charge to only pick up phone later and in 15 seconds phone was dead.

To prove the readout lies I pulled the battery as it was swelling and it had to go.

I plug in the phone and the darn thing said it was charging up just dandy all the way to 100%.

No battery was in the phone.......................................sigh

New battery now and it's charging like is should but as far as how it reads as it charges seems like a generic pre arranged timer with pre arranged readout. Useful but not accurate.