Battery not charging at all on my brand new Aspire M 481 T Laptop

Well, this is a brand new laptop because I almost never used it since buying in few years ago. I did upgrade it to Windows 10, probably two ago and then mothballed it. Brought it last week and ....the battery percentage remains 0% no matter how I try to charge it.
I have deleted MS ACPI info using device manager.
I have tried to disconnect battery, delete acpi info, boot, shutdown, reconnect battery and all that good stuff. I have tried to tighten the battery screw. I have tried to reset the battery from the pin hole. Same problem.
in the troubleshooting process, I also seem to have killed the touchpad. Screen is still responsive, no other issues.
So
1. How do fix the touchpad issue?
2. is there Any diagnostic tool that can detect or help fix the battery not charging problem?
3. Worst case scenario - if I am out of luck, any idea where to get the new battery from and whether it is easy to replace by a tech savvy user or better to get it done by a professional.
I must add that I am very disappointed by this acer product. While buying, I was extremely apprehensive of the fact that the battery in this laptop is not user replaceable - my worst fears have come true.
Please advise me.
Thanks in advance for any help or input.

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aphanic

When I read brand new in the question title my first reaction was "probably best to replace it for another unit then", but what you meant was barely used if at all and at this time replacing is probably not an option.

In any case, charging is handled by firmware and independent from the OS, that's why they charge when they're powered off too. I take it id doesn't charge while powered off either? If that's the case... but you're able to use the machine while the AC adapter is plugged in, we'd know the power connector is fine.

Depending on the charge you left the battery with when you last used the laptop for the last time it could have gone bad (still, I find it unlikely... and there's no blinking light or anything right?). When you're not going to use something for a long while it's best to leave it charged halfway, say 60-80%.

Anyway, diagnosis, is the OS seeing the battery? Download and run BatteryInfoView and post a screen capture of what it reads, just in case. I also prefer user replaceable batteries, but in this day and age they're kind of long gone in favor of slimmer already integrated ones; but the good news is that for laptops it's not hard for a regular user to replace them usually. There are plenty of tutorials, guides and even videos in YouTube for example on how to replace the battery.

If your laptop is an M5 481T there's at least a Brazilian (by the accent, speaks Portuguese nonetheless) person that made a video on it. The problem could be acquiring a quality battery if Acer doesn't sell the original one anymore, but I have no recommendation for sellers at the moment. In any case opening up a laptop varies from one to another, but it usually boils down to taking out a bunch of screws and separating the bottom part of the case (or the upper one) being careful of any flex cables connecting one part to the other.

If you do open it you could try disconnecting and reconnecting the battery cable, but! Before you do anything else, there's a battery reset button or procedure in Acer laptops it seems that could help out without needing to take anything apart. Sometimes there's a hole in the bottom part where you have to insert one of those SIM card tray things for example to press a button that's underneath for some seconds, other times you have to keep the power button pressed for 15+ seconds, I'm sure @JackE could tell you the appropriate one.

Aaaaaaand for the touchpad, since you didn't open it or anything chances are the issue is software related so it'd be easier to fix. Could you post a picture of the Device Manager with the HID and Mice categories opened? And let us know if there's any yellow triangle over there too.

aphanic

Pardon my French, but what the actual *beeeeeep*?! There's one of the screws in an M5 that acts as a jumper (think of it a short wire), what kind of design is this?!

Anyway, if yours is such an unit, check that the screw in that place is present (obviously) but that it's properly tighten too, it has to make contact with some metal parts for the battery to charge in those models apparently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaNHJzpp93g

Comet

aphanic - man, you are beyond awesome. Thank you so much sparing your time and reply with quite a details. I did learn something new from your reply that one should not leave laptop stored with full charge.
A small good news to start with - the touch pad is working now, I shut down the laptop and rebooted after several minutes. So now the only outstanding part is the battery not charging.
Yes the OS sees the battery, when I had disconnected the battery and booted, OS told me no battery. It detected it when I connected again. Also windows tells me there are no issues with battery! There is no flashing light, orange light is steady. I did the reset battery thing already but for 4 seconds. I will try holding for 15 seconds. I will also download batteryinfoview and post the info later on.
Once again, thanks for sharing so many useful tips in one post. Most appreciated

Comet

aphanic - Thank you for the link, I did read about this issue earlier and had tightened the screw at the back.
I am attaching the snap shot from batteryinfoview...shows current capacity as 0%. It just does not want to start the charging.
Wondering if there is any way of kick starting the charge.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/9p/0vyh0yq5ux4l.jpg

aphanic

Comet said:

I did learn something new from your reply that one should not leave laptop stored with full charge.

Yep, it pretty much applies to any modern lithium based chemistry so smartphones are also in there, when storing them for long term keep them half charged.

I'm glad the touchpad is working, at least you can move around without the need for an external mouse! As for the battery not charging... (and seeing they have a screw as a jumper haha) I'm out of easy answers I think.

It is the battery that came with the laptop, isn't it? The control chip seems to be relaying information, expect the health to be a bit lower though if it's actually completely drained; but I'm bugged by the inability to know the manufacturer of the cells (damaged controller maybe?). I'm not an expert by any means, but I have yet to encounter the situation where it reports "UNKNOWN" (aftermarket sellers usually fake that info, but there's always some brand in there).

Summing up the video I linked to a little bit, he had a customer (I presume) that wanted to replace the battery because it wasn't charging. He explained that one of the screws actually acts as a jumper bridging 2 points in the motherboard and is responsible for the charge to being. He went on saying that if you wanted to check if that was the cause you could kick-start the charge by using a pair of tweezers and connecting those 2 sides manually with the laptop disassembled.

He also stated that it could have been meant as a security measure so the battery was disconnected when the case was removed, but that you could solder those points and leave them permanently shorted... (but now we're digging in deep haha).

If you feel like disassembling the laptop, give that a try (the using of tweezers, not soldering haha) and see if there's corrosion in that point or the screw that could prevent them from making good contact, and disconnect-reconnect the battery connector to the motherboard for good measure.

There's something that comes to mind, although it was a single cell not a battery that had that problem. It got drained completely and was pretty much dead and a regular (smart) LiPo charger wouldn't want to charge it because the voltage was too low. They don't like it when it falls below 2.5-3v and it was way lower. So I had to use a dumber charger, one that didn't have those security features built in, to slowly increase the charge a little bit until it reasonable for the other one to take over (because the dumber charger wouldn't know when to stop, so I couldn't let it do all the job).

Your battery could be drained like that cell I had, but I have no idea whether you'd be told about it by the laptop or not, or if it'd be able to charge it in that state. I'll let you know if I think of anything else other than disassembling the laptop and checking those things or poking the connector with a multimeter looking for the battery voltage

Comet

aphanic
Well, over the weekend I did a few more tests. Changed the adapter. Tightened the back screw even more. Made no difference. I ran the battery report from within win 10 from cmd prompt. Downloaded battery optimizer. All point to a healthy battery. BUT, i don't see the charging notification anywhere. This is as if windows detects battery fine but does not start the charging. This was originally a windows 8 laptop, I am wondering if there is something in Windows 10 that is preventing it from kick starting the charging. if it is not charging, I should see the notification. I just see plugged in 0% available. There is no mention of charging/not charging.
I also tried to upgrade the BIOS as the on my machine are older. Well, the bios upgrade does not run because it detects that battery is 0% LOL.
Can you please point me to the battery changing video you mentioned earlier?
And finally, do u think it is a good idea to kick start the charging by inserting a tweezer instead of the screw, when the laptop is on? Or will that fry the MB?

aphanic

I don't think Windows 10 makes any difference vs. Windows 8 or any other OS to be honest, charging should be handled by the device circuitry / firmware itself without the need for an OS (after all we can charge the laptops when they're off).

I guess flashing newer firmware when the battery low is disabled as a security concern, they generally require the AC adapter connected during that operation (which should be enough), but if the battery were seemingly dead like yours and there was a power failure (e.g. because of a storm) while the flashing was underway the machine would be dead for good.

There is a way to disable that check, but I wonder if the risks associated would make it not worth it this time.

Before attempting that, I'd look for less riskier alternatives and see if there's something that could work. Using the tweezers or any conductive element is safe for example, because they would be doing the job the screw does when the laptop is closed. It'd just be to see if the screw wasn't making good contact or something like that, but I don't really know how much of the laptop you'd have to disassemble to see that screw

In any case, in this video a guy is disassembling an M5-481PT, he's purpose is to replace the fan of the CPU; but the battery is disconnected around the 5:12 minute mark, that white connector with several cables is the one that comes from the battery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtB_boan-mA

And this guy takes apart an M5-581T which may have a different layout but he removes the battery around the 3:55 mark, I post it because in that model apparently you need to remove the speakers before you do can remove the battery so it may be relevant to yours as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1pj_vvDXE

I think yours ought to be similar, to the first one but you'll see if there's anything in the way of taking the battery out like screws, flex cables etc. once you are removing it. As long as you're methodical and note or remember where everything goes it should be easy

.

Comet

Thanks again for the links and time. I will wrestle with it this week and update with final results.

aphanic

Darn it! The first video was removed off of YouTube... I wonder why, but I think I found the same video with a different URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzOORuB8oFM

Same timing, around 5:12 removes the battery connector

Kev1234

Was this issue ever resolved? I'm having a very similar situation with my Acer Aspire A717. I've had it for about a year and 2 months (so just outside the 1 year warranty) and a few weeks ago the battery started acting up and not charging even when plugged in. Half the time it charged but half the time it didn't. This wasn't a huge deal as it would still work when plugged in, however at a certain point I started getting the "low battery" message even when plugged in and then the computer would shut off. If I looked at the battery monitor, it would show 1 or 2% and no charging.

I know that my AC adapter is working because when I plug it in the orange charging light stays on, however if I turn the computer on it gives me a low battery warning and shuts off in less than a minute. I did everything that Comet did in his first post, (doing the internal battery reset as recommended by Acer by unplugging the computer and resetting the battery using the battery reset pinhole in the back, deleting the ACPI battery drivers under device settings so that they reinstall, tightening all the screws, etc.) but nothing seems to work.

I've looked all over the internet for solutions and this forum is the first time i've heard anyone mention the tweezer kick-start method so I might try that next.

I called a tech guy who gave me some free advice saying that maybe I need to replace the battery. Does anyone know if a bad battery would behave this way? I don't want to order a new battery if this isn't the problem.

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