Novatech nFinity1406 - Dual Battery Setup Malfunction... any help much appreciated... :)

Hello Everyone,

I have recently acquired a new laptop (last monday, 6th of October to be exact), as my old Aurora m9700 seemed to have lost all hope of life and didn't want to continue working...

My new toy is a "slimbook" from Novatech, the nFinity1406 with dual battery, Intel i7 3517 CPU, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, NVidia 640m 1GB, and all this in a 14" laptop weighing in under 2kg and only 24mm high.

So it's small, light, but powerful. And everything on it that I'd tested up until this last weekend was AWESOME, plenty of League of Legends and other stuff that I felt like throwing at it... And then this weekend, because I had time, I figured I'd attempt to test its mobility capabilities, i.e. battery life and whatnot.

Alas! The 2nd battery doesn't work as it should. I hadn't spotted the issue until now because Windows 7 detects the 2nd battery as it should. However, when I run down the primary battery to 5%, at which point it should switch to the secondary, I just lose the juice and my computer immediately shuts down without warning. The reason for the latter is because the primary at this point is at 5%, and the secondary at 100%, giving me an overall status of about 47% battery (i guess the 2nd battery is a tad smaller than the primary) and so windows doesn't send critical warning about saving work, etc, etc...

I've tried googling this stuff and it seems that not many other people have this same issue, as I've been hard pressed to find a solution online... and Novatech Technical Services just said "send it to us, we'll fix it for you and send it back to you". But in this time I would not have a little computer of my own to play with. Which of course would suck quite badly.

So what I would really appreciate is if you could throw me some ideas to try and fix this issue, I think it has to be software related, even though if I try to start up my computer without the primary battery in its slot and without AC Power, the computer doesn't budge (ie no connection to the 2nd battery active, it seems).

In any case, any help/suggestions would be most welcome, thanks in advance for any replies!!!

Regards,
shrimp

*Cringe*... haha... exactly what I didn't want to hear. So there's no realistic way to easily check to see what might be the issue? All my drivers are up-to-date, and all that, but I thought maybe someone knows more then Google about this... sigh. Thanks for the reply, in any case...

lol qhn you crack me up...

brett/ghost, hopefully you have some hardcopy textbooks for you to go medieval on your studies?

with regards to the battery issue, i contacted Novatech today for a second time (first time was yesterday) because they hadn't mentioned anything about covering costs for sending the computer back to them.

this guy i spoke with today definitely seemed more competent than the other guy did - even offered some troubleshooting, which we went thru the options he thought of together. and even though i'm not very PC-savvy there were even some things which i'd done which he hadn't thought of.

his main thought was that it's not software... "a software issue would imply that Windows 7 doesn't detect the battery".

so we ended up changing the plan and i won't be sending the computer back just yet, as there's one thing left to try: they're sending me a new secondary battery. if it works with the new battery, then obviously it was the originally installed battery. if it doesn't work, then he's quite sure that it will be an issue with the motherboard.

to be fair, mobo had been one of my first thoughts, that it might be an issue with the relay-switching - but i'm not sure if that is the actual mobo malfunctioning or if it might be related to bios or something like that? i think that's where my knowledge reaches its limits.

in any case i'll keep you guys posted.

stay cool

shrimp

Ghost/Brett - do you also have a Novatech, or is this another computer just facing the same issues as I have with mine?

oh i thought the n1407 was the one with the optical drive instead of the 2nd battery? or am i wrong with that? i thought the 1406 was the only one with dual-battery setup... fair enough.

DUDES!

the new battery arrived today. immediately started running down the primary battery, switched out the secondary batteries... waited... waited... waited... toilet break... waited... 0%... screen stays on... power is definitely coming from the secondary battery... WIN.

I am happy to announce that I didn't require sending the computer back to Novatech (woulda sucked because I live in Germany) . It was a faulty secondary battery. problem fixed. BOOM.

thanks for the posting, in any case.

and brett - just get them to send you a spare one. i hope you have the same issue and that fixes it. if the problem persists than it might be your mobo after all. fingers crossed - give us an update!

stay cool
shrimp

Well gentlemen, I must very angrily inform you that the 2nd battery issue has reappeared on my computer... i'm now thinking that they should keep the bloody batteries and i'll just take DVD drive instead... it's totally uncool.

Gonna ask them to tell me whether i can get a BIOS update or something, maybe it'll help.

Or do you have any other suggestions?

Well to be honest i'm quite fed up with the whole story, the whole point of getting the dual battery was to have a bit more freedom between one electrical socket and the next... so I argued with them that if they take it back to fix it, I can't be held accountable for any costs - initially the guy said that they can't reimburse the costs for international postage, to which i obviously flipped out (i'm in germany). he then spoke to his manager and now i don't need to pay anything, and they're picking it up tomorrow. if all goes well then i get it back in a week ... so long...

last resort - dvd drive. and in any case there's not guarantee it won't happen again after they return it, in which case i would definitely ask for the drive and the difference in price.

will keep you posted.

shrimp