Dell Inspiron 1545 battery problem

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Hello there,

I actually have a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop. The original battery is dead since 1 year now and I have been plugging the laptop to use it.
It’s after 1 year that I’ve bought a new battery. I charged it fully and then unplug it for use.
When the battery discharge to 75-80%, the laptop goes off by itself. I then tried to switch it on immediately (without recharging the battery) and it works for full 2 hours before the battery is discharged fully.

I’m thinking that maybe something get damaged during the period I used the laptop plugged.

What do you think?

Thank you,
Tiya

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Have you checked your power settings to see when the laptop is automatically shutdown when on battery?

Joe

--Joe

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Hello Joe,

Yes I checked it all. I even changed the setting so that the laptop does not shut down or sleep.

Thanks,
Tiya

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Have you tried shutting down, then removing and reinserting the battery?

Joe

--Joe

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I did not try that.. will try it and see if the problem occur at 75% battery level.

Thanks

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When I bought a 3rd party battery for my Sony, a small program had to be installed that allowed my system to use a non-Sony battery. Any chance you purchased a non-Dell battery as a replacement?

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It is a Dell battery. Actually the battery works but it just stop working at 75% battery level and the laptop switches off.
And when I switch it on again, it continues to work fine for about 2 hours.

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Laptop has a built-in (software) battery gauge.
When the gauge reads wrong, it may think the battery is empty earlier than it should be.
Your laptop battery gauge is tuned to the old battery, which has a short discharge time at the end of its life. When you put in a new battery, the gauge still ‘thinks’ it is the same old battery, with short discharge time.
To correct it, do this (or consult Dell technical support on this):
1. Run the battery down repeatedly even though it is still quit full. (Try keep booting up the PC as many times as it needs.)
2. Some laptops have battery manage software. In the software, it allows you to run the battery down to 10% or as low as you can get to (while ignoring the battery gauge).
3. After that, (when down to 10%), fully charge the battery while letting the laptop running. The ‘fuel gauge’ is now calibrated to the new battery.
The gauge, in a sense, measures the charge time from ‘true’ empty (actually 10%) to 100%. Then use this time as total discharge time.
4. On some laptops with advanced battery software, you can select ‘new battery’ and the software does the gauge tuning for you.

I would not run battery down below 10% (say, 5%). (You can do this by adding a load together with the laptop connected.) All battery types lose some life at or below 10%. But you have to do it a few times in its entire life in order to ‘tune’ the gauge, to get more accurate discharge time.

This also applies to new battery in an UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply).
If the battery is expensive, only run it down to 30% or 20%. This preserves more ‘life’ for the battery, at the expense of more accurate discharge time.
In UPS, the ‘fuel gauge’ accuracy is not that important. Most of the time, the battery is fully charged. When power line is off, the UPS uses the battery. Now the time to ’empty’ depends on the gauge accuracy. (Commonly “empty” means when it is 10% left. This is to protect the battery from over-discharge and thus kills it.) Unless total discharge time accuracy is critical for you, I would keep more life of battery than to run it down to 20% or 10%, just to get more accurate gauge for the total discharge time.

Side Note:
Most batteries are not able to discharge down below 30% without some loss of life, laptop battery included. The best is 40% to 60%. That is, when it is down to 40%, charge. This gives the longest battery life.
Lithium Ion battery (for laptop) could also burn/explode if over charged.
There are electronic circuits inside the battery pack itself, and also in PC as well, to accurately measure battery energy to within 0.01% and even better!
The electronics count all the energy dispensed and all the energy charged backed, accurate to better than 0.01%!
The accuracy is for reliability.

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Thank you very much scaisson.

I’ll try to do what you said.

To run down the battery I must reboot the laptop repeatedly. Right?

Tiya

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The keep-rebooting is just a way to *really* run down the battery.
If after reboot, the laptop keeps running, then let the laptop runs down the battery. (Best is run a program continuously to prevent the laptop going to sleep.) If it shuts down again, then reboot, or keep rebooting and run the laptop, until battery is run down (to 10%, NOT 5% or zero. See my previous post).

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Hello scaisson,
I tried what you told but it’s still the same.
My laptop still shutdown at 75-80% battery level.
I’ll try it once again and see if it works.

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Make sure the AC power is **OFF** when running the laptop battery down.
Must **unplug** the AC power adapter and do reboot(s) and discharge, deplete, the battery.

One last method.
This final method works on UPS in my own experiment, a few times even.
But be careful not to totally discharge the battery. Need some technical knowhow as well.

When the laptop says the battery is depleted (even though it is not), note the battery charged state (say, 70%). Now take the battery out of the laptop completely. Put a load on the battery, such as a DC light bulb or a resistor that draws no more than 200-500mA, smaller load is better. Monitor the voltage. When done, the battery is pretty much depleted. To be accurate, use a Voltmeter, try to stop the discharge at 30% (100%-70%=30%). That way, the battery state matches the laptop fuel gauge.

If it is too technical or complicated, here is a simpler method:
Estimate the time and then put the battery back to the laptop (AC power adapter disconnected). Use the laptop’s gauge to show the discharge condition of the battery. If not discharged enough, take the battery out of the laptop and discharge again, until it matches the ‘discharge’ condition shown by the gauge. Or, to be sure, lower than the number. Example: discharge down to 30% or 20%, when the gauge *initially* shows 70% that the laptop shuts down.

All these extra work assumes you are unable to re-tune the battery gauge.
In my experience, I can even re-tune the gauge when using extra-capacity (1.5X) replacement battery. And they are Dell.
If nothing works, may need to consult Dell technical support.

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Thanks again..
Will try that. Hopefully it works!

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Try running it down completely and then recharging it. Doing that makes the battery recalibrate itself. Windows has a setting that sets how much warning time you have before the battery goes flat. Set it as low as possible and then leave it in standby until the laptop switches off.

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Remove the battery.
Unplug the adapter.
Hold the power switch for >20 seconds to empty the power gauge RAM.
Plug in Battery and power plug. See if this helps.
You may have to reset the clock.

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Thank you guys.
Just hope that works. I’m really irritated with that issue.
Or can it be that the problem is with my adapter?

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Phil may have provided the best last option to reset the fuel gauge. It simply resets everything.
Thanks.

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It might be wild, but one thing to consider is that the battery level reading could be a red herring. Windows allows you to set different times for sleep and hibernation depending on whether you are on battery or AC. Maybe one of those things is occurring and the time just coincides with how long it takes to run the battery down to 75-80%. Just a thought.

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No, this is not the case because I’ve changed all such settings to ‘Never’.. means the laptop will never sleep or shut down after a specified time.

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I do’t believe your prolem is with the adapter. I believe that your syste needs to learn about the new battery.Just as you are unsure of your system, your Cp is unsure of the new batt. You both need patience to learn.
Your Cp must charge rundown and recharge the battery to learn the capacity of it. This takes time. If you operate it on battery until is gets run down, plug it in till it is full, unplug it till it is rundown again, repeat, there three (3) things which will happen:

1. The battery will be conditioned to full capacity.
2. The system will adjust to the full capacity of that batt. and the gauge will be accurate.
3. The system will adjust the gauge to the battery over the life of the battery till it quits.
You will have to do this with each new battery until the computer becomes obsolete, which I believe, was yesterday.
Oh well, philomel.

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Hey guys, I thank you all for your help.
I’ve actually been able to find what was wrong.

In fact there are advanced battery settings which I didn’t know about. While exploring some settings, I found it.

We’ve got ‘Change advanced power settings’ when trying to edit plan settings. In this window, there are battery settings for low level, critical level etc..
And my critical battery level was set to 77% and critical battery action was set to shut down.
That’s why each time the level reaches 77%, the laptop is shut down.

So, I simply changed the level to 5% and everything works fine now.

I thank you all again for you help.

Tiya

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Glad you found the proper settings, and thanks for posting the solution. This might help someone else.

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