[Content copied from another forum on advice of another member]

Hello everyone,

I had been using my XPS Gen 2 as a desktop replacement and rarely porting it around, so I decided to remove the battery and store it in my fridge to preserve it. The battery was not brand new but it was my second (the first completely failed unexplainably after about 6 months) and probably less than a year old when I put it in the fridge. That was about two years ago.

The trouble is, now that I've put the battery back in, the notebook will run for only a few minutes on it. The strange thing is that the charge level displayed by Windows XP will be 100% as long as I have AC power connected, but when I disconnect AC the charge level will stay high for a few minutes, and then suddenly drop all the way to 8% or less, triggering alarms and standby mode in short order.

If I reconnect AC power while the battery level is critically low, the same thing happens, but in reverse - after a few minutes, the displayed charge level will shoot back up to high level. Basically, the charge level is skipping the middle 80% or so of the range.

I know Li-Ions degrade over time even without use, but this seems too severe. I should note that I do not have Dell's monitoring/diagnostics software installed (I have reformatted and reinstalled Win XP, and only installed what I thought was necessary).

Anyone care to take a stab at this? I'd like to know what's going on and what I might be able to do before rushing off to buy another (3rd) battery.

As an aside, does the battery get charged while the notebook is in standby? We leave it in stanby whenever it isn't being used, and then turn it off completely (including AC) at the end of the day. We turn it on the next day when we want to use it for the first time.

Many thanks.

I forgot to mention that I when there was a battery recall a few years ago my battery was not on the blacklist.

I am currently letting the battery discharge until the PC goes into standby (3%), then fully recharging, waiting a little bit, then repeating this whole process. It seems like it may actually be helping, but I'd still like to know why I would need to do this "calibration" and what is going on.

At 100%, the "time remaining" is around 2 hours just as it was when the battery was first installed.

If the battery is degraded, will the charge level still get to 100% (the max charge level of the reduced-capacity battery), or will the charge level display a lower ceiling (90%, 80%, etc.)?

Just saw that nobody ever responded.

The battery display will still get to 100%. It will just decay faster and faster over time.

Hope this helps.
Patrick
http://twitter.com/batteryfuel