Battery problems

My laptop charges only when it is completely shut off. If the battery capacity were to drop to 99% and the laptop is on, it would immediately switch from AC to battery power no matter how much I disconnect and reconnect the adapter. Nowadays things have gotten worse. Even when the battery is at 100%, the computer randomly switches from AC to battery power (and once it does, there's no going back unless you shut down and charge for a bit). Every time it does this the blue light on the adapter goes off and I have to disconnect and reconnect the cord connecting the laptop to the adapter before the adapter will turn on again (disconnecting and reconnecting the power plug for the adapter won't turn it back on). I tried taking out the battery yesterday and running on AC alone but again the computer randomly switched from AC to battery and since there was no battery in the compartment..

Before I got this laptop the original owner had similar problems and was made to buy a new ~$170 adapter. This is an hp pavilion zx5000. Sometimes, the computer randomly things the battery has run down all the way to 0% even when it's just been charged and you get the 'you should change your battery to keep from losing your work' followed immediately by the computer going to standby. When I get it back out of standby, the battery is back at 100% again.

I need to know now, since I am in no financial position to buy a new laptop after buying a 1gig memory stick to troubleshoot what wasn't a memory problem. Is it the battery that's causing this, or the adapter, or motherboard or what? What I've noticed is that if you twist or nudge the adapter prong while its in the laptop (by mistake), the blue light on the adapter goes off again and I have to do the whole disconnect and reconnect again. Incidentally, I loaned this adapter to a friend who used to have the same laptop as I do and she never complained about these problems (and I'm sure she would have).

The battery runs down pretty quickly, incidentally.

 

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Laptops make me cry...!

I'd suggest you try a different adapter - either your friend's, if she got one of her own, or go into a HP shop/big PC shop and ask to try one out. It's an expensive piece of kit, so I imagine they'd let you try it first.

If that doesn't solve it, I'd guess it's the power control/board inside the laptop. It might be a relatively easy repair for somebody, depending on what's gone wrong. You say it works, intermittently, so that's good news in my book.

The way that the light on the adapter goes on and off seems a little odd though. I've never noticed before, but does a laptop charger light go on when it's just plugged into the wall and not into the laptop?

Does it ever mess itself up when you're not in Windows?

If not - have you installed, removed, modified or otherwise changed any programs on your computer near the time the problem started?

If you go into
control panel -> administrative tools -> event viewer
does it give you any clues at the times when the battery screws up?

I know this isn't much use to you, but this is the reason I hate laptops. The batteries always get messed up. If you're lucky, you have an outdated small desktop laptop tethered to the power socket. Otherwise something else breaks and it's beyond economic repair.

 

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Have you put a meter on the battery charger terminals to find out if the charger is putting out the correct voltage?

Have you tried a new battery? If the meter shows the correct voltages, your battery is probably hooped.

 

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