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very common battery problems.... fixes?

post #1 of 23
11/30/04 at 9:56am
Thread Starter 
hello gentelmen,

once again i will consult the knowledge and experience of my sager peers. i recently have been neglecting problems with the 8890 i own, and am now finding the time to fix everything i have wanted to for quite some time. so, i will start with this one. my battery is apparenlty dead. yes, it is constantly plugged in, as well as the ac adapter into the wall, never really having time to run on battery except for when i take the time to run off battery in attempts to save it. and when i say dead, i mean dead. once going off ac power and onto battery, the monitor shows going from 100% to 5% in about 30 seconds. i was wondering if anyone has seen this in their systems, what the warranty time is on the batteries, and if anyone knows how to turn back the clock on a fried battery. currently i'm thinking about the old bill nye trick o tossin em in the freezer. but i have no true idea if it will even work. thanks in advance gents.
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post #2 of 23
11/30/04 at 11:04am
I'm curious about this too. Since moving to the UK, I use my 8890 batteries even less than I did before. After running on the battery for a while the other night, I shutdown at 40%, went to bed and in the morning, booted up to find it beeping at me with a critical 2% remaining. The only possible explanation other than the battery is I left everything plugged in to all the ports (external monitor, firewire hard drive etc etc). Surely those don't use the battery when the unit's off...

Anyway, let's hear what people have to say. I know that if you don't use the batteries, they lose their ability to hold a charge, but is there any ways to revive them if they're not totally dead yet? (eg, mine worked fine up until 40%).

I'll do some more testing with both my batteries when I get a chance.
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post #3 of 23
11/30/04 at 11:06am
Is it possible to buy a new battery and test the effectiveness of the old battery's charge vs. the new, or could it be something more sinister?
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post #4 of 23
11/30/04 at 4:01pm
Ok so I tested one of my batteries:

Boot - 97% remaining
30 mins - 69%
48 mins - 45%
55 mins - 35%
64 mins - 23%
74 mins - first beep at 5%
76 mins - critical beep at 3%
97 mins - shutdown

There's definitely something wrong in there. The annoying thing is it thinks it's lower than it actually is, so it starts beeping well before (~25mins) it runs out. Tried changing the power settings, but it didn't change anything - unless it only changes once I reboot. I'll charge this one to about 40% (which won't really be 40% - just what Windows *thinks* is 40% ) and swap batteries and test the other one.
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post #5 of 23
11/30/04 at 4:12pm
You should be able to recalibrate the battery by doing a deep recycle - drain the battery as much as possible, then do a full recharge. You can drain by booting into the bios screen, and let it sit there until the unit shuts off.

After your next recharge, your power meter should read more accurately.

-Peter
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post #6 of 23
12/1/04 at 12:01am
Thread Starter 
hey psyang,

i think the question we have about your post is will this repair a burnt out battery, or just help to more accurately portray the percentage of the battery remaining? thanks for the help guys.
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post #7 of 23
12/2/04 at 11:58pm
I think that what he suggested would probably do a little bit of both, partly help fix the battery and partly help fix the gauge
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post #8 of 23
3/12/05 at 8:42pm
okay, i'm having a battery problem as well. (this is the second battery, the first one that came with my laptop lasted about a year, and now goes from 100% to 3% almost immediately. when charging my battery it will get up to about 48%-52% then jump to 100%. likewise when it says it is fully charged it will start on 99% and then drop immediately to 48-52% when unplugged. after it drops to ~50% it loses charge at the same rate of a new battery, i.e. normally. i just bought this second battery a few months ago...(this past christmas), but apparently there was only a 30 day warrenty, so i can't return it. is there anything i can do to save this new battery from going bad/getting worse??? these things are expensive..lol
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post #9 of 23
3/12/05 at 9:03pm
As far as I know, there's no easy fix. I got the impression that the liquid in the batteries can crystalize, reducing the life of a single charge and aside from opening it up and flushing it out and replacing all the stuff inside, there's no fix.

In no way am I suggesting anyone should try and open a battery - that's just dumb. Sadly I feel the need to say that because there are people who would try...
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post #10 of 23
3/13/05 at 3:56am
i've been rigorously charging and discharging today attempting to see if it would help the battery prob. what i have been doing is unplugging the laptop for about 10 seconds and then plugging it back in until it says it is fully charged again. in doing so over about an hour or two i have brought the said 48-52% that it was dropping to up to about 59%. do you think if i keep working on this will it bring my battery back? i mean, if it seems to be working, its definately worth a try. a laptop without a battery is rather contradictory..lol

oh, yea forgot to say what i have: 8890, 2.6ghz, 100gb hd, 1024RAM, tv tuner, 128M Radeon 9600Pro (with omega drivers....i have found these to work a lot better than the sager ones, and are updated more frequently and are now cat 5.1!) 16" UXGA
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post #11 of 23
3/13/05 at 5:27am
It's tempting to trust the percentage that Windows shows, but I'm very hesitant to trust that. Fully charge it, and then time how long it takes to completely run out - then see if your method increases the overall battery life by testing again under the same conditions. PassMark has a great program (free trial) called BatteryMon which is great for this type of thing. Good luck! Let us know what happens either way.
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post #12 of 23
3/14/05 at 7:07pm
I had the problem with my 8887 a while ago, and contacted Sager Tech Support. They say that the batteries last for about a year then go dead. Myrkat told me he had the same problem too; I asked him about it since we bought ours at about the same time.
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post #13 of 23
3/15/05 at 1:41am
It seems that the batteries JUST CAN'T HANDLE A SAGER! LOL.
Mine are the same. Dead within 18 months. So much for Li-ion technology. My old NiCd even with their stupid memory effect lasted 3 years.

Anyone for fuel cell?
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post #14 of 23
3/15/05 at 3:20am
haven't had time to test the method i mentioned earlier but might in the morning...dang li-ion ...grr...theres really no use in buying any more batteries if they'll just keep going bad this quick...

sager li-ion batteries
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post #15 of 23
3/15/05 at 3:25am
oh, and thanks for the batterymon link, it looks like it'l help with me tests a lot
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post #16 of 23
3/20/05 at 1:47am
it seems that this method has worked (for my specific battery problem). The charge that it drops to is now about 76%, and yes, it has gained operation time...yesss! now that i have gotten the percentage up, the battery seems to be leveling out, continuing to gain percentage on its own while on the charger, without me having to continue the charging thingy i was doing.
if this helps any of you guys, great.
maybe we can beat the sager "stupid battery bug" lol

peace
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post #17 of 23
3/21/05 at 4:15pm
now up 2 86
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post #18 of 23
3/22/05 at 10:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by anglersrus
what i have been doing is unplugging the laptop for about 10 seconds and then plugging it back in until it says it is fully charged again. in doing so over about an hour or two i have brought the said 48-52% that it was dropping to up to about 59%. do you think if i keep working on this will it bring my battery back?
So it's working? Is it actually adding time to your maximum runtime or is it just recallibrating the gague so it doesn't jump around so much?
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post #19 of 23
3/23/05 at 3:06pm
Yes, it is actually adding run time, i'm getting ready to do a full cycle. The % it drops to is now up around 99-100 all the time, so i'm going to test to see how long it lasts. Who knows, the charger may not be working right, but as far as i can tell it has been working. As soon as I get this test done i'll post the time my computer stays on, remember it was staying on for about 30 minutes before I started the charging thing...
crossing my fingers...
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post #20 of 23
3/23/05 at 6:58pm
anglersrus can you post exactly how you are doing this reconditioning.
Your original post was not all that clear.
I am sure a lot of us would like to try this with our own batteries.
Thanks.
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