5 replies to this topic

[msu50000]

I've been gaming with this laptop for a couple of months now without issue. Over the past few days the battery will deplete while gaming MWO and plugged in? Not sure why it's doing this, I haven't changed any settings and it worked great for a couple of months. Now when I start gaming I can only get about 45 minutes to an hour in before the battery is so low that the machine lags and shuts off.

When I bought the laptop used it did not have a power supply. I bought an oem Dell 130W supply. When gaming it would sometimes get fairly hot, not so hot that you couldn't touch it but hot enough to take notice. Now the charger doesn't do that, could I have a bad charger? I also have a USB laptop cooler pad that is powered off of USB, been using it the whole time.

Dell Inspiron 7000 Series
i7 2.6GHz
12GM ram
4gb video card
1tb hard drive about 10% used

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks guys.

[Tarl Cabot]

Test.. Remove the battery. Disconnect the PSU and its cord and put it back together then plug it into your computer. Does the computer stay on without a battery in place?

It sounds like there might be shorting. yes, the charger/PSU may be bad or where the PSU plugs into the laptop may have some of its connectors to motherboard come loss (solder). There could be some other scenarios but that is off the top of my head. This could happen if the battery circuity is faulty or the charger is faulty.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 05 March 2018 - 03:23 PM.

[Kalimaster]

Sounds like a bad charger. My suggestion is to take it to a computer shop and have them test the charger. If so, it will run you about 35 to 45 bucks, depending upon the charger. Good luck....yeah, I hate computer problems.

[msu50000]

Thanks guys, I didn't get a notification of replies to the thread so just following up today. I've ordered another charger and will try and get the current one tested today. What I've noticed is that after gaming for maybe 30-45 minutes while the computer is plugged in that the battery stops charging. I've tried this a few different times to confirm, when I shut down MWO the battery begins to charge within a minute or two of MWO being closed. I thought it might be something to do with the cooling pad running off of USB and/or heat build up, but when the cooling pad is running the laptop runs just slightly warm as compared to hot without it. I hope it's charger issue. On a side note, my battery is internal and not easily removable. I'll try and remove it today and see if that helps.

Thanks again.

[LordNothing]

my solution for this is as follows:

charge the battery as full as it will go.

open the battery pack (this may involve melting the plastic with acetone or using a dremel).

desolder all the cells, sometimes they are spot welded to strips that are hard to put back together, but those strips are usually soldered to something and its better to detach it at the other end. you only have to free one end to take it out of circuit.

measure each of the cells with a multimeter, you want to see cells around 4.2 volts, this is the nominal charge for a lithum ion/polymer battery (in the latter case be careful up on step two because the word "li-po" is synonymous with the word "bomb" in my book, miss with the box cutter and it will catch on fire). if you find one that is much lower than that, say anything lower than 4v, replace it with a cell of the same type.

re-assemble the battery the best you can. electrical tape is your friend, you can use duct tape for the extra redneck look.

and the final step, dont take the thing on a plane, tsa will look at you funny and want to throw out the entire thing. you may even be flagged as a terrorist and added to the no fly list.

or you can save yourself the headaches and buy a new battery on ebay.

if you have a new fangled laptop that is sealed with no access to the battery, you have no-one to blame but yourself. thanks for contributing to the massive e-waste problem by not buying serviceable technology. flip the bird to the planned obsolescence crowd. with moors law dead in the water there is no point to such bogus bs.

Edited by LordNothing, 08 March 2018 - 03:46 PM.

[msu50000]

Soldering is beyond my level of comfort. I removed the battery and plugged the laptop back in, turns on and runs just fine. I also bought another OEM 130w Dell charger, it does the same thing. After about 5 minutes of MWO being on, battery stops charging. Turn it off and within a few minutes battery begins charging again. Battery is removable via some screws and that's how I've been using the laptop since I removed the battery. Using the cooling pad via USB does not appear to make any difference. I'll try another battery when I get tired of having the laptop plugged in, as it is it works for me. Thanks for the input fellas. Have a good weekend.