A515-51 shuts down after around 1 minute - battery problem?

Just acquired this laptop from a relative, and it has a slightly odd problem on it. It will boot up OK but around a minute later, it quickly flashes up locked and shuts straight down. It does this consistently. I have checked the little switch behind the RAM flap which it seems causes many random shutdowns, and that is operating OK. I have opened it up and removed the battery and it works fine without it. So it's obviously linked to the battery, the machine hasn't been used in months, but I was hoping someone could confirm whether the battery is likely to be duff before I shell out on one. It looks like it's about 3 years old. Thanks!

Accepted answers

YorkshireMidge

Well, I took the plunge and went for a new battery, and it has sorted out the problem. Probably the strangest battery fault I've had on a laptop but there you go!

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Leostat

check the battery health to see if it reports it as foo bard, from a cmd prompt
powercfg /batteryreport

It outputs a HTML page with the battery health / history

YorkshireMidge

Leostat said:

check the battery health to see if it reports it as foo bard, from a cmd prompt
powercfg /batteryreport

It outputs a HTML page with the battery health / history

Thanks - I connected the battery up and booted up the machine and just managed to run that command before it shutdown again. Disconnected the battery, and then booted it back up to take a look at the file. What's odd is the report shows the battery to be active and with 27% charge but the battery icon in the tool tray shows 0% (you tend to get a very low battery warning from windows as its booting). Strange.......

Leostat

What does it show the max capacity / design capacity as?

YorkshireMidge

Leostat said:

What does it show the max capacity / design capacity as?

Design - 48,944 mWH
Full charge 36,480 mWH
(the 27% represented 13,011 mWH)

I've let it boot up and shut itself down several times now in succession, and have re-run your command (see below). It kinda looks like if it's plugged in a little while whilst the machine is off, it gets some charge - but as soon as the machine is switched on the charge collapses and the machines shuts down - even though it is still connected to the mains and I would have expected the machine to stay on its feet.

I've left it powered off and charging for the last 30 mins, and it had got up to 26% when I re-ran your command, but it then shut itself down again, and subsequent reboots in short order showed nothing in the charge column, same as below - so at least its consistent!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/lz/94p9zgmlc7x0.jpg

Leostat

Weird, that means the controller is able to see the battery health as OK. It may be worth running it to 0, hitting the battery reset on the bottom side then leaving it to charge for a while. But as you've mentioned chance the battery is just kaput if the health is OK

YorkshireMidge

Thanks - have just done the battery reset and I'll give it a good charge and see what happens.

YorkshireMidge

Well, I was expecting by this morning I'd have 100% charge, which would promptly disappear the same as yesterday. But I did the battery check immediately on power up and there was nothing in the charge column even after being left overnight. And then it shutdown as normal. See below:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/9a/kscbbgz3fzcy.jpg

So, I booted it and let it shutdown a few more times and repeated the check. The orange light was still flashing this morning when I first switched the machine on, so my conclusion is that 26% was all it could take even from umpteen hours of charge, but in the few seconds it took me to fire the report off, the charge had gone to zero again. I then left it powered off and charging again (7:03 - 8:22) and it's back up to 26%.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/oh/oiktiju5yi25.jpg

YorkshireMidge

Well, I took the plunge and went for a new battery, and it has sorted out the problem. Probably the strangest battery fault I've had on a laptop but there you go!

Leostat

That indeed is a weird one! Thank you for the update and glad the new one works 🙂

YorkshireMidge

I was trawling through the BIOS updates for the machine and I stumbled across one from 2017 that fixes the machine not wanting to resume if the battery is less than 6%. Made me wonder if that issue was what was causing the machine to shutdown when the charge collapses. However, it wouldn't allow me to apply a BIOS update with the battery unplugged, but I'll update the BIOS now anyway I think. Thanks for the pointers.

YorkshireMidge

Ignore previous update - when I checked the BIOS, it was already running 1.09, and the resume fix was in an earlier version - 1.05. Updated the BIOS to current version. Issue now closed.

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