Win XP always showing 0% battery charge on Dell Latitude notebook

[Bud H]

5-year old Dell Latitude C600 notebook computer with 800 MHz Pentium
processor and 256 MB RAM. After clean install of Windows XP SP2, Windows
always shows the battery at 0% charge.



When you unplug to work off the battery instead of plugged in to AC power,
you immediately get the critical battery low alarm. I have had to disable
automatic shutdown from the critical battery alarm, and I have confirmed the
battery is good for more than an hour.



The BIOS properly shows battery is at 100%. Also, I did disable some
administrative services to save RAM use, but I see nothing that would cause
this problem.



This could be related to a problem noted at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889816/en-us .



Anyone know why the Windows XP battery meter would always think the battery
is at 0% charge?



Thanks in advance,



Bud H

 

[Gary]

If your laptop battery is 5 years old, then that is your problem.

 

[Lem]

5-year old Dell Latitude C600 notebook computer with 800 MHz Pentium
processor and 256 MB RAM. After clean install of Windows XP SP2, Windows
always shows the battery at 0% charge.



When you unplug to work off the battery instead of plugged in to AC power,
you immediately get the critical battery low alarm. I have had to disable
automatic shutdown from the critical battery alarm, and I have confirmed the
battery is good for more than an hour.



The BIOS properly shows battery is at 100%. Also, I did disable some
administrative services to save RAM use, but I see nothing that would cause
this problem.



This could be related to a problem noted at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889816/en-us .



Anyone know why the Windows XP battery meter would always think the battery
is at 0% charge?



Thanks in advance,



Bud H

Assuming that by "clean install" you mean you formatted the hard drive
and then installed XPsp2, did you install all of the Dell-specific
drivers and utility programs? This symptom sounds like you didn't.

Check here http://tinyurl.com/qauzq particularly under "system and
configuration utilities" (I have no idea what Dell means by "OS
updates"). Also, someplace in the 5 pages of hits that start here
http://tinyurl.com/p8et2 is probably a battery meter utility that needs
to be installed as well.

 

[JohnO]

If your laptop battery is 5 years old, then that is your problem.

Some of the older batteries are WAY better than the newer ones, in terms of
longevity. I have an Inspiron 7000, circa 1998, and it still gives me nearly
two hours. I believe they traded charge time for life time.

-John O

 

[Unk]

5-year old Dell Latitude C600 notebook computer with 800 MHz Pentium
processor and 256 MB RAM. After clean install of Windows XP SP2, Windows
always shows the battery at 0% charge.

When you unplug to work off the battery instead of plugged in to AC power,
you immediately get the critical battery low alarm. I have had to disable
automatic shutdown from the critical battery alarm, and I have confirmed the
battery is good for more than an hour.

The BIOS properly shows battery is at 100%. Also, I did disable some
administrative services to save RAM use, but I see nothing that would cause
this problem.

This could be related to a problem noted at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889816/en-us .

Anyone know why the Windows XP battery meter would always think the battery
is at 0% charge?
Thanks in advance,
Bud H

Dell Battery Meter, Utility
<http://support.dell.com/support/dow...aseid=R65211&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=84849>

Battery resource information and health.
<http://support.dell.com/support/dow...eid=R109280&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=142036>

Dell "Battery" search
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?cat=sup&subcat=dyd&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&k=battery

 

[Bud H]

Possibly related issue.......

When not plugged in, the Dell Latitude will not start when the power on
button is pressed. BUT - if you plug it in, press the "On Button" and
unplug it only one second later (before the boot process from BIOS has
hardly started), it continues to startup properly. So it only needs to be
plugged in when pushing the power button and no other time during the bootup
or Windows XP startup.

Strange?

Bud H