Laptop Battery Not Charging

It seems I have no luck with laptop batteries...

At any rate, I have an old HP laptop. About a year ago, the motherboard on it was failing, and the battery was barely holding a charge. Since the laptop was under warranty, both were supposedly replaced (I think the battery was replaced-I had to go out of country before I could recollect the laptop and so it has basically sat here after being repaired for eleven months).

Anyway, the company didn't bother to reinstall windows. So when I stated it up, there was DOS. however, I noticed that the battery was charging and it continued to hold a charge while I installed Windows. I know it held a charge because I had to move it, which required unplugging it, then replugging it in (in which it never shut off).

However, since I have installed Windows XP, I have noticed that 1) the battery does not hold a charge and 2) for whatever reason, it doesn't even bother showing the percentage of how full the battery is. I have tried every power management plan but seemingly to no avail.

Frmo this, I almost swear Windows XP has somehow made it that my computer DOESN'T hold a charge but that seems insane. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Test another battery on that laptop and/or test the battery on another laptop.

Seems to a problem with ACPI/APM. Do you have a battery device in the "device manager"?

If your system supports it, you could try re-calibrating the battery (this option is usually found in BIOS.) Failing that, then I would concur that replacing the battery would be the best course. If you can do a separate fresh XP installation (or boot to a Linux live CD) and verify its charging there then it could be pinned down an OS issue.

Well, it seems that Windows sees the battery (I should add there is a fun complication. Windows is in Chinese. Zerg will know why...) after turning on the option. It suposedly is charging but always is at zero. The weird part is it DID work initially but within the first day broke...

Hmm my Toshiba laptop suddenly started doing that too. (No disk wipes or re-installing windows like you had though)

I took out the batteries and cleaned the contacts with a rubber eraser and that seemed to do the trick.

There is an option in Windows that you can set it to display your power source and battery remaining, but I forget where that's set up.

So...several months later.

Alright, so the battery had no charge and then the following happened...it started to charge! Sort of. I watched it go up to about five or six percent, then noticed a few minutes later at 100 percent. So I unplugged it and naturally it turned right off.

Alright, so I plugged it back in, restarted, and it was at seven percent. Soon, it went to 75 percent. Then, eventually, it went to 0 percent. I unplugged ita gain and predictably it turned off again. And now it won't charge anymore.

Any ideas on what it's doing? this battery is supposedly fairly new (a year old but never really charged).

Dead battery. Get a new one.

Argh, may I slap Circuit City around with the "old" one since it was suppose to be "new" but more likely refurbished?

By all means.

Wonderful. Oh, and I guess this thread can close.