Windows 7 causing battery problem with laptop I bought on ebay

KillerWatt

mouthscradle wrote: »

I think it's a case of once win 7 has messed with your battery, it's over. But switching to another OS can halt any damage.

Battery charging is controlled at hardware level by the laptop itself, the OS simply sees what the BIOS tells it about the battery.
However if the OS cannot interpret the information correctly for whatever reason, it will obviously misreport within the OS.

We have 4 laptops here (including an 8 year old Acer Travelmate) all running Win 7 Ultimate quite happily (including on battery power), although all of the operating systems were installed clean rather than upgrading from earlier versions of Windows.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Follow on from #7 where I said "" All Li-ions talk to their parent about their overall health "
Reading KillerWatts's post #12 that sentence should now read "" All modern Li-ions talk to their parent about their overall health ""

Win7 uses modern Li-ion circuitry & firmware Revs to report to Win7 its battery health. [ W-hr ]. The % it degrades from the original design capacity is calculated by Winblows, when its at 60% or 40% of its designed capacity windows spits its dummy out and tells you, hence the “Consider replacing your battery” message.

So the 60% of degradation threshold = 40% of its design capacity
that's how a battery originally delivering five hours becomes a two average hour battery.

Richie-from-the-Boro

mouthscradle wrote: »

By the way, I installed a dual boot of Ubuntu last night as some people with the problem have said that switching to ubuntu has saved their battery. Well no such luck for me but ubuntu does have an interesting graph plotter thing for your battery function, the graph was amazing, I'll screenshot and post a link when I'm on the lappy next, posting this from my phone.

I think it's a case of once win 7 has messed with your battery, it's over. But switching to another OS can halt any damage. Unfortunately mine has gone beyond help. Depending how I get on with ubuntu I may buy a new battery and only ever boot to ubuntu when the new battery is in. I'm just really scared to buy a new one and the same thing happen cos it's money I can't afford. I'm a student and I spent money I'd saved over the last year to buy the laptop, it pains me to have to spend more through no fault of my own (nor the sellers).

Your amongst friends who like yourself need to preserve modest income. Find someone with exactly the same battery and swap / borrow for 24hrs. At least that way you are dealing with a truth / fact and not a maybe / guess.

You are then in a position to at least know your money is not going to be wasted if you take the plunge on a new battery.

Hammyman

Windows 7 has done nothing to your battery. No OS does - they merely report what the battery is telling the BIOS.

mouthscradle

Hello again, thanks for the further help

I have decided what I'm going to do about the laptop. I tried using Ubuntu but the battery was still lasting at best 25 minutes. So I've decided to sell it. I'm going to be completely honest about the problem it has when selling. What I'd like to do is reinstall Vista, so that the buyer would only have to buy a new battery and as long as they are using Vista or other the battery would be fine. If they choose to upgrade to Win 7 and try it again, the battery would be under warranty I guess but I will make sure they know the problems it's caused me.

I have bought another laptop now, it's a Dell Inspiron and I love it, it has Vista 64-bit and is eligible for Win 7 upgrade but I'm not going to risk it, even though I have 3 year Dell warranty including accidental cover. Not even gonna go there haha

The Dell lappy came with a CD with Windows Vista on. If I were to use this CD in the old laptop to install it, but then use the Vista license code on the sticker on the bottom of the old laptop, would this work? I have no idea about these things. I want to get Vista back on it using its old license code if possible.

And then just sell it and let the new owner make the decision whether to risk Win 7 again. I know I won't be putting it on this new one until Microsoft's forums seem to suggest they have resolved the problem. I've had a look around regarding the imminent service pack 1, and apparently it doesn't address the problem at all, so I won't be holding my breath of ever using Win 7 again on a laptop.

Hammyman

mouthscradle wrote: »

hello again, thanks for the further help

i have decided what i'm going to do about the laptop. I tried using ubuntu but the battery was still lasting at best 25 minutes. So i've decided to sell it. I'm going to be completely honest about the problem it has when selling. What i'd like to do is reinstall vista, so that the buyer would only have to buy a new battery and as long as they are using vista or other the battery would be fine.

The battery is faulty. How many more times? It doesn't matter a jot what operating system you put on it will still only last a short while.

Hell, you've even tried Ubuntu and got the same results so why can't you just get it into your head that the guy who was quite happy to sell you a laptop with a pirated version of Windows 7 on also sold you one with a duff battery?

KillerWatt

mouthscradle wrote: »

I have bought another laptop now, it's a Dell Inspiron and I love it, it has Vista 64-bit and is eligible for Win 7 upgrade

I'm surprised that any manufacturer is still selling hardware with an OS that is almost a year old, hope you didn't pay too much for it.

Regarding the battery life, Hammyman has nailed it...the battery is f***ed and NO operating system will change that fact.

penrhyn

Whats all this shouting, we'll have no trouble here....................But you are correct of course.

mouthscradle

Hammyman wrote: »

The battery is faulty. How many more times? It doesn't matter a jot what operating system you put on it will still only last a short while.

Hell, you've even tried Ubuntu and got the same results so why can't you just get it into your head that the guy who was quite happy to sell you a laptop with a pirated version of Windows 7 on also sold you one with a duff battery?

Excuse me... Have you even read the topics on the Microsoft forums that I have referred to, before posting on here to me as if I'm some kind of idiot? I suppose all the thousands of people who are affected by this problem were also just sold "duff" batteries? Posted in just the last 24 hours:

"I have a Acer TravelMate 6292. Received the message to change the battery. Bought a new battery which lasted 2 days before I started gtting the message again. Microsoft really needs to sort this problem out.
Can't do presenatations on my laptop and this is seriously affecting my livelyhood.".


"Good, you've held off upgrading the Dell Laptop. Mine is Dell Inspiron 1545 and I've been getting this message for the last two days. My set (and battery) is exactly 9 months old, much too early for me to replace battery.".




I was not sold a duff battery. It lasted over an hour for the first day, after Win7 had literally just been installed on it. It lasts around 5 times longer in other operating systems than in Windows 7. Why can't you get your head around that?

There are reports on the Microsoft forum by other users with the same issue who have dual booted to Ubuntu or Vista and when running in those systems they have had much better battery life, for example this guy who posted on there yesterday:

"I have the same problem here on ASUS X83VB-X1. Oddly enough I can charge the battery longer in Ubuntu and the battery lasts longer. Windows 7 doesn't seem like it killing my battery, but that it is incorrectly reporting the charge and the charge capacity. ".


Why is it so stupid of me to try and see if that helped me? Unfortunately it didn't.

I am fully aware that no matter what OS I install, it will need a new battery, hence me telling whoever buys it that exact thing.

Lastly, the version of Windows 7 is not pirated. I have had it validated by Microsoft. There are other shops here that sell the upgrade cds for £20-30, and they are genuine. I'm not just some dumb gullible idiot, the seller I bought from was a genuine man who as far as he was aware sold me a genuinely working, good quality item which through no fault of either of ours has developed a problem.

I don't appreciate being made to feel like an idiot for trying to find alternative solutions to the problem before spending my hard earned money on another battery which will possibly go exactly the same way. Thank you.

patman99

I had the oposite happen on a Samsung R20+, with Vista, the battery lasted 30 minutes, with Win 7 it lasts a good hour.

You can usually find 3rd-party packs to fit the most popular laptops for about 1/3 the price of originals.

BTW, if you are installing like-for-like (ie Win 7 Home in place of Vista Home) then the Vista key will work just fine.

Oh, and the latest version of 'RemoveWAT' will undo MS's lock-out just fine (as my friends 2 boys will testify).