PC hardware forum: Battery sometimes recognized in power management (laptop).

No it does not get only partial charge. A big problem that I noticed is that it will sometimes die while the power is pluged into it. And no, it is not supposed to say running on AC power when plugged in with the battery. It should only say that if the battery is removed from the system. When the battery is in and power plugged in, it should say Charging.

At these times that it says running on AC power, I go into control panel to power management and go to the battery screen where it shows no battery recognized. After removing the battery and re-insterting to get it to charge correctly and tell me it is charging, if I go to power management it shows the battery type and power level and whether or not it is charging.

The main problem with this is that it does engine programming and if the laptop dies while programming, it could cost us more then the laptop to replace the computer we are programming. I know that is enough reason to buy a new laptop but I am not the one that makes these choices. Please help if you can.

So far I am leaning toward mainboard problems but I will try anything you can think of that may help.

As for the computer being slow when unplugged. It does not take a laptop 3 minutes solely on the XP loading screen aside from all the bios. Plus, my laptop I have at home if run on battery will show you the slower clock speed in the system settings. This Sony shows the full clock speed and has no options to tell it to slow down the cpu for power savings. I do not think this laptop has that option, and if it does I dont think it is being used anyway.

Well its a family business that I work in not dealing with computers at all but I am the only one that works on and maintains the 10 computers that we use for work. So Im stuck with just an hourly wage here.

I have already tested the wall unit with volt meter and it measures out good, just a sliver over which is better then underpowered. How do I check the mainboard? contacts? battery?

Thanks for the info, I know I wont be able to swap the board to test it so lets move on to the contacts and battery. by contacts, do you mean the piece the charger plugs into that runs to your main board? I know some are plugged in and some are soldered in. if this is plugged I know how to test it. I didnt look at the battery close enough to know but can I use volt meter on the battery alone? And I dont assume you can check battery voltage with the charger plugged into it...

Plus I'm wondering if getting power problems will even affect the issue Im having, which is windows not recognizing the battery all together. I guess I'll find out eventually.