"Plugged in, not charging"

M

Mr. Pedantic

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 19, 2009
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I've got an HP Probook 4320s. The problem is that even when I have the AC plugged in, the batteries don't charge. So I'm currently at 95% charge (I was at 97 when I first noticed this problem), and I haven't found a fix.

I've followed the instructions here and here; no luck. I've also done the uninstall/reinstall of the ACPI-compliant control method battery, no luck either. I suspect that it's something wrong with the battery or the power cord, but I don't have spare components of either to check this. I also don't want to send this off to HP, since I really need this laptop (I needed it enough to buy it, after all), unless I absolutely have to. What I'd really like is a fix for this problem, preferably without spending any money. Any ideas?

Thanks.
 
I have someone that bought a ProBook 4320s on my recommendation about 4 weeks ago and amazingly she called me Saturday to say the same damned thing, that the battery doesn't seem to be charging since Thursday at some point.

It could be an issue with that model, or the particular battery, I really don't know. My advice to her is the same as what I'll give you: contact HP and see about a swap, not a repair. It's brand spankin' new - the ProBook line was just introduced in mid-March so, it could be an issue with those new machines.

Get HP to resolve it, and fast. All those solutions you're trying are not going to help, I'd say.
 
Do you have friend or no someone with a compatible setup so that maybe you could test the battey and adapter? My first bet would be the battery but sometimes adapters can cause this issue as well is my understanding. I have an old Toshiba tablet that does it but its a junk unit now anyway, don't need it any more fortunately.

Perhaps you can buy a spare battey with some way of returning it for a refund and likewise the same for an adpater as well in case you need to test both.
 
Did the laptop or the AC adapter get jostled around? if so, the AC jack on the motherboard may have gotten damaged. I've had that happen on an HP and a Dell. The first time, I hadn't figured it out until I bought another battery and charger :eek:(
 
I was under the impression that somewhere (possibly in Windows, maybe in hardware), the charger isn't enabled over a certain percentage of battery life in order to save that cell in the battery since cells have a limited number of charge cycles.

My ASUS G51JX doesn't charge unless it's below 93% (somewhere around there), then it kicks the charger on and it goes to 100%.
 
Just got a new Acer and it does the same thing. Won't charge if it is already in the 90ish%, just ran it down and it charged back up to 100%. I think it is a "feature" to preserve the life of the battery.
 
I have someone that bought a ProBook 4320s on my recommendation about 4 weeks ago and amazingly she called me Saturday to say the same damned thing, that the battery doesn't seem to be charging since Thursday at some point.
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Wow. What happened to her?

Get HP to resolve it, and fast. All those solutions you're trying are not going to help, I'd say.
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I'll probably call them tonight or something. Hopefully there's someone without an outrageous Indian accent on the other end who can actually help.

I was under the impression that somewhere (possibly in Windows, maybe in hardware), the charger isn't enabled over a certain percentage of battery life in order to save that cell in the battery since cells have a limited number of charge cycles.
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I'm trying this at the moment. Running BOINC at full load with screen brightness up full; if this is true, then I should be able to recharge it after about an hour or so.
 
Wow. Okay, I never knew it was so simple as it having to wait till it was down to a certain level before it recharged. I'm down to about 60%, and it started charging straight away.

Can I turn this feature off? I usually use my laptop without a power point close to me for 2, 3 hours on end, and having to wait until it's down to a certain level is obviously not a good idea, since my laptop only does 6 hours max (with brightness minimal and absolutely no load; doing anything at all decreases this to 3 hours, multitasking takes it down another hour or so depending on what I'm doing). I would rather burn through my batteries and have to replace them more often than have the laptop die on me when I'm working.

Incidentally, is it possible for me to buy a bigger battery? I think I have a 6-cell at the moment, HWMonitor says it has 47.5mWh completely charged. It would be nice if I could get a spare battery, or at the very least get a 9- or 12-cell, especially if I can't turn off the charging restriction.

Thanks guys, for the help.
 
I passed this info along to that client of mine and she let it drain down to 70% or so and plugged the AC adapter in, still no charge activity that she can spot. The laptop does respond to the AC adapter because the brightness kicks back in on full, and the power plan adjusts accordingly, but the battery isn't charging. I told her to put in an RMA (she paid for the replacement plan) so they'll be shipping her a new machine sometime later today (Tuesday) and she'll test it out or drop it off with me for testing and then she'll pack the original laptop up for shipping back.

Wish I could keep the old one I swear, damned fine machine, sad to see it's got this problem but, I'd take it even so. ;)

Nice to see it's working for the OP, however.

Just as a sidenote for some folks, if you're interested in getting longer battery life, you just might want to look into undervolting which improves operating temps (sometimes dramatically) and obviously extends battery life at zero cost - absolutely zero cost to you. Here's the thread over at NotebookReview.com, it's a very long one but the most important info is in the first post obviously:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/235824-undervolting-guide.html

I've done that with an older Core 2 Duo laptop and shaved nearly 14C off max temps, it idles much cooler, and I gained probably an extra 30-40 minutes of battery life (up to about 3-3.5 hours on a charge from about 2.5-3.0 depending on how I have the brightness, what I'm doing, etc).

Zero cost for longer runtime and cooler operation... can't beat that at all.
 
Mr. Pedantic said:
Incidentally, is it possible for me to buy a bigger battery? I think I have a 6-cell at the moment, HWMonitor says it has 47.5mWh completely charged. It would be nice if I could get a spare battery, or at the very least get a 9- or 12-cell, especially if I can't turn off the charging restriction.

Thanks guys, for the help.
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HP's web specs for that laptop say they have a 9-cell for it.
 
Just as a sidenote for some folks, if you're interested in getting longer battery life, you just might want to look into undervolting which improves operating temps (sometimes dramatically) and obviously extends battery life at zero cost - absolutely zero cost to you. Here's the thread over at NotebookReview.com, it's a very long one but the most important info is in the first post obviously:
Click to expand...
I read that thread. It's good, but it doesn't work for me. The voltages are locked, the BIOS is crappy and has no such features in it, not even CPUz reports the voltages, let alone anything that allows me to change them. It's disappointing, but not surprising. It's a notebook oriented at business customers, after all. I have undervolted my Core i7 C0 to 1.128V load, but that's not as useful as undervolting a notebook CPU, obviously.
 
If I can get my hands on the ProBook again from the client (probably the replacement which is in transit now since she'll want me to clean install Windows 7 Pro on it and get rid of the HP gunk), I'll see if I can get something happening using RMClock. If I luck out on any methods I'll post more info, but I can't believe that it doesn't affect the voltages at all.

Perhaps the makers of RMClock are working on a new Core version for the iX processors, would be a good idea I'd say.
 
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