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

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.

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

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 .

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