Battery doubts for Acer Aspire VX15 (V5-591G)

LadySky89
LadySky89 Member Posts: 4 New User
edited October 2023 in 2020 Archives
Hello, nice board over here, I didn't know the existance of it until today, when I researched a problem and found a topic (that however didn't provide the answer I was looking for).
I have possession of an Acer Aspire V5-591G that is 3 years old by now (tho I only started using it this spring, it was my brother's laptop), and today I opened it because I wanted to replace the HDD with a a brand new SSD. Everything fine... just that I noticed the battery is not perfectly flat anymore.

I made a few pictures of it. It seems just slightly swollen to me (cell 1 and 2... third cell is perfectly fine), although the picture maybe makes it seem more swollen than it is... Still, I can feel the soft "curve" of the surface even if I put my fingers on it. Now the question is... should I worry?

The battery works perfectly fine, but it may have suffered some heat (this laptop heats quite much, and we have boiling hot summers over here, with indoors temperatures sometimes reach even 32°C). I try to keep my laptop as much cooled up as possible, with external fans and all that, but with summers so hot, heating is inevitable.

I was told that batteries tend to inflate a lil bit due to usage and aging, and that it doesn't necessarily means they end up bulgy to a dangerous point, but I'm no expert to determine how much swelling is ok, and how much is not anymore. I'd like to know your opinion about it, and if I need to replace it, can I still find official replacements around?

Considering the problem might be the summer heat + the fact I use my laptop plugged to the AC 90% of the times (gaming and videos take too much charge and wouldn't play good with just battery), it would probably be a good idea to remove it, at least during hot weather... but if I do, how do I store it? and for how long can it go unused before I put it back? (I hope at least 3-4 months)
And most importantly... will the laptop work without a battery?

Thanks in advance!

Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Go to the elevated command prompt.  Enter 'powercfg /batteryreport'. Then return to the desktop. Open file explorer. Then search for' battery-report.html' in the c:\windows\system32\ sub-folder. Double-click to open it in the browser. Post screenshot of the first part of the report if possible that compares design full charge capacity with its remaining full charge capacity. If the current full charge capacity is about 70% or more of the original design capacity, it's probably fine to keep using. Some mainboards allow booting with the  battery disconnected, some don't. You just have to try it and see. It shouldn't damage anything with the battery unplugged. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • LadySky89
    LadySky89 Member Posts: 4 New User
    Hello JackE, and thanks for your response.
    This is the screenshot you requested, along with part of the activity graph below... According to this report my battery is quite healthy, right? The second value is higher than its design capacity... however I had read complaints of other people on the internet that had similar reports despite the battery being visibly swallen, so I'm not sure how much these things are to trust, and there seems not to be anything that could analyze the health of cells sadly. Does the graph below indicate how often the battery becomes active again? Because if that is so, then it's discharging/recharging way often; the graph shows a similar situation for every day I turn the laptop on. Also, too bad it doesn't say how many cycles the battery has done/has left to do...


  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Open Device Manager. Click batteries folder. Right click and uninstall ALL drivers that you find inside this folder. Exist Device Manager without trying to reinstall anything. Shut down Windows normally. Then turn it back on again. If the battery charge indicator in the tray indicates a nearly fully charged or 100%, unplug the charger. Let it drain to about the 10% level at which time you should get a notice to plug the charger back in.  Let the battery go through a 2 or 3 discharge-charge cycles. Then run the battery report again plugged in so we can examine the numbers again. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • LadySky89
    LadySky89 Member Posts: 4 New User
    Here I am finally, I did exactly as you said and the entire process took a little while. I had to set the battery to maximum performance, else it'd take too long to discharge... Anyway, it looks like my brother had never calibrated it, because the first time I let it discharge, it turned off at 16%, the second time it turned off at 10% just before I was about to plug it... it started to behave realistically at the third cycle, so I completed it and did one more, and then I ran the new report. Here it is.



    During the cycles I did not observe any overheating, nor on the computer surface nor of internal components. I kept HWMonitor in background all the time, and it didn't show anything unusual either. Battery wear levels stayed between 10-17%, the value was not fixed. I wanted to re-open the laptop and see if something changed on the battery surface, but sadly I had no time. It does seem to be working fine considering its age and the poor usage that's been done of it...
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Wear level is better than I'd expect  for 3+ year old battery. I'd expect it to be more like 35Whr at full charge. Maybe with a few more cycles it'll drop down some before levelling off in the high 30s. Looks good though so far. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • LadySky89
    LadySky89 Member Posts: 4 New User
    Should I uninstall the drivers again and go through a few more cycles?
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,891 Trailblazer
    Only cycling at this point. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

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