Who's good with Laptops?

[evil_twin]

I got a problem with my laptop. I will leave it plugged in and it will only charge to 20% then stop. I've been watching it and it says that my laptop is plugged in but not charging.

So is it the battery?

[thornado327i]

Se if it works solely on cable (meaning - remove the battery and start the computer).

If so, my guess would be the battery. How old is it? Do you mostly run on cable or do you actually use the battery?

In car terms - if your car battery wouldn't want to charge more than 20%, what would be your first quess? ;)

[evil_twin]

Thats what I figured it was the battery. I took the battery out and the laptop runs on just the cable so we're good there. I got it to charge up to 91% as of now, but that is unplugging it when it says it's not charging and plugging it back in so it will charge.

I run normally on the cable because lately it seems like the battery has gone to shit. I've had the laptop for ~2 years.

[thornado327i]

In general (no matter what salespeople say) batteries tend to get worse if you run your laptop on cable AND battery on daily basis.

I use the same laptop at work, at home, while travelling etc. My solution is taking the battery out whenever I know I'll be working at least few hours on cable.

Although I replace laptops every 2 years, so idk how would the battery behave after that period.

[equate975]

x2 on the battery. It could be a flaky charging board, but those don't really fail that often. I would buy a new battery and see where that gets you.

[AndrewBird]

I know some laptops have a battery calibration thing built into their BIOS. You might check and see if yours does and run it. It basically recalibrates the computer to know when full is on the battery so it can accurately tell you how much life is left.

[daniel]

from personal experience, i'd say you probably need a new battery.