Solve : Laptop Battery Problem?

1.	Solve : Laptop Battery Problem?
Answer» I have an old Omnibook 5000C that I inherited and I want to TRY and make it usable without investing too much money into it. I bought an AC adaptor and it powers up fine but I have no idea if the battery is any good. I unplugged the AC adaptor to see if it worked on batt power and got NOTHING. I checked to see if the driver was installed and I had to reload it from the Win 98 disk but at least now it is recognized in device manager which it wasn't before. I get no battery icon in the system tray but when I go to power options and click on the batt icon there and it's at 100%. I know very little about LAPTOPS but I assume that is about all I can do to test the battery. I removed the floppy drive in the other bay and installed an extra battery I had(both are F1137A btts) and I got a dim icon and it says 0% charging in slot 2. I left it for 8 hours and still got a 0% charging message. I swapped batts in the slots and then got a 49% charging message but the % never increased. I figure I have two crappy batteries but is there anything else I can try? Is there something special I have to do besides remove the AC adaptor to have it try and boot to a battery? ThanksQuote ...I unplugged the AC adaptor to see if it worked on batt power and got nothing.... Battery is no good.It appears one battery is shot and the other only holds a partial charge, You can boot with tthe 49% battery and see how long it lasts. That's the best indicator. Leave the dead battery out. It serves no purpose.Thank you for he tips. The one battery is ALMOST surely dead but the one reflecting 49% does not boot the system at all. Not even a flicker of power when I remove the AC Power. I really suspect the 49% is probably also bogus. I contacted the on-line store I bought one of the batteries from and they said that the battery had to be charged first. That sounded reasonable but shoudn't the battery at least be DETECTED by my system no matter how dead it is? I mean I can certainly understand if I got a bad battery on-line but no matter how dead the battery is I would think there should at least be an icon showing me an empty battery. Someone else suggested my internal charging unit (whatever that is) may be bad and that I should buy an external charger. I hate to invest too much more in this thing esepcialy if it winds up being some kind of configuration thing. I can return the battery that showed a partial charge and hope that perhaps I will get a good one in return and I agree that is does sound like I have two bad batteries. Thanks again for your help. Go for the return. I agree with not spending too much more cash on it until you get it operational with power. Have you checked the HP web site for downloads for that model? It is so old it may die of other causes soon anyway. I went through 2 "new" batteries with my old laptop and neither would charge. They were surely new but 7 years old. Give these guys a try: http://www.pacificbattery.com/about.htmlI have used pacificbatery.com as well. No complaints there.

Answer»

I have an old Omnibook 5000C that I inherited and I want to TRY and make it usable without investing too much money into it. I bought an AC adaptor and it powers up fine but I have no idea if the battery is any good. I unplugged the AC adaptor to see if it worked on batt power and got NOTHING. I checked to see if the driver was installed and I had to reload it from the Win 98 disk but at least now it is recognized in device manager which it wasn't before. I get no battery icon in the system tray but when I go to power options and click on the batt icon there and it's at 100%. I know very little about LAPTOPS but I assume that is about all I can do to test the battery.
I removed the floppy drive in the other bay and installed an extra battery I had(both are F1137A btts) and I got a dim icon and it says 0% charging in slot 2. I left it for 8 hours and still got a 0% charging message. I swapped batts in the slots and then got a 49% charging message but the % never increased. I figure I have two crappy batteries but is there anything else I can try? Is there something special I have to do besides remove the AC adaptor to have it try and boot to a battery?
ThanksQuote

...I unplugged the AC adaptor to see if it worked on batt power and got nothing....

Battery is no good.It appears one battery is shot and the other only holds a partial charge, You can boot with tthe 49% battery and see how long it lasts. That's the best indicator. Leave the dead battery out. It serves no purpose.Thank you for he tips.
The one battery is ALMOST surely dead but the one reflecting 49% does not boot the system at all. Not even a flicker of power when I remove the AC Power. I really suspect the 49% is probably also bogus.
I contacted the on-line store I bought one of the batteries from and they said that the battery had to be charged first. That sounded reasonable but shoudn't the battery at least be DETECTED by my system no matter how dead it is? I mean I can certainly understand if I got a bad battery on-line but no matter how dead the battery is I would think there should at least be an icon showing me an empty battery. Someone else suggested my internal charging unit (whatever that is) may be bad and that I should buy an external charger. I hate to invest too much more in this thing esepcialy if it winds up being some kind of configuration thing.
I can return the battery that showed a partial charge and hope that perhaps I will get a good one in return and I agree that is does sound like I have two bad batteries.
Thanks again for your help.
Go for the return. I agree with not spending too much more cash on it until you get it operational with power. Have you checked the HP web site for downloads for that model?

It is so old it may die of other causes soon anyway. I went through 2 "new" batteries with my old laptop and neither would charge. They were surely new but 7 years old. Give these guys a try: http://www.pacificbattery.com/about.htmlI have used pacificbatery.com as well. No complaints there.

Solve : Laptop Battery Problem?

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