Odd battery problem with Asus laptop..

D

drnick5

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Hey all,

I have a really strange problem with an Asus laptop (K501UW)

Came in with a bad keyboard. I ordered a new one and swapped it out. (one of those pains in the ass ones where you need to take out the board to remove/replace the keyboard)

When I booted it back up, I noticed that the battery icon shows as "not detected". I double checked that I didn't forget to plug the battery back in. I even reseated the connector to make sure. But its still not detecting.

Here is where it gets strange. If I have it booted to windows and unplug the power cord, it runs off battery without issue. But, it shows "power unknown" when you hover over the battery icon. if you click the battery icon, it pops up and shows 100%. I ran a bunch of youtube videos off battery, but it doesn't seem to decrease down from 100%.

I searched around, and tried a known trick that involves shutting the computer down, unplugging the battery, booting it up off of AC power, going to device manager and removing the battery driver, shutting down. pulling power, reconnect battery, plug in power and turn on.

Still the same result. I then tried, removing the battery and power, holding the power button for 1 minute, then plugging the battery and AC power back in. Same result.

Whats even more strange, if the system is booted up, and I pull the AC power, it works just fine off of battery. But if I shut down the computer, and then try to turn it back on. it won't turn on unless I plug the ac power back in. I even tried plugging in the cord, turning it on, then immediately removing the cord, it starts right up and goes into windows.)

At this point, my only idea is to order a new battery. I let the customer know whats going on, who flipped out, accusing me of breaking their computer. So now i'm forced to eat a $65 battery and hope it works....My worry, is what to do if the new battery doesn't fix it.

Any ideas? Am I missing something? I double checked all the connection are made, and the battery wires to the connector seem to be just fine as best as I can tell.
 
Have you run a battery check to see what percentage of the battery still holds a charge?

I had a similar issue a couple weeks ago. Battery would say charging or even at 100% but was actually dead. Even running a battery check showed the wrong results.

Decided the battery was shot and just not reporting its condition correctly.
 
MichaelBits said:
Have you run a battery check to see what percentage of the battery still holds a charge?

I had a similar issue a couple weeks ago. Battery would say charging or even at 100% but was actually dead. Even running a battery check showed the wrong results.

Decided the battery was shot and just not reporting its condition correctly.
Click to expand...

I'll give this a shot, how do you usually run a battery check. I've seen some BIOS (usually Dell's) have an option in there, but Asus doesn't seem to have one.

In this case, it never says charging. best I've seen is "plugged in, not charging" and when I pull the plug, it says battery 100%, but never decreases.
 
First thing I'd do is boot up a Linux live disk and see how it acts. Then you'll know whether it's a hardware or software problem.
 
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CLC said:
I said start with the basics, completely bypassed this, good idea!
If you don't have it get it https://partedmagic.com/
Click to expand...

Honestly, I didn't even think of this! making a bootable USB now, I'll give it a shot.

to me, it seems like more of a hardware issue, given the fact that I can't turn the computer on via battery. only when plugged in... so I'm sort of skeptical of it just being a software issue, but I'll see what I find.
 
drnick5 said:
Honestly, I didn't even think of this! making a bootable USB now, I'll give it a shot.

to me, it seems like more of a hardware issue, given the fact that I can't turn the computer on via battery. only when plugged in... so I'm sort of skeptical of it just being a software issue, but I'll see what I find.
Click to expand...
It's very useful and very inexpensive, you can't go wrong. I was thinking more of a hardware issue myself but it never hurts to check. To be honest if you haven't pull the cmos for about a half hour try that. I hate to say it but you may have borked the board but I didn't really want to go there yet.
 
CLC said:
It's very useful and very inexpensive, you can't go wrong. I was thinking more of a hardware issue myself but it never hurts to check. To be honest if you haven't pull the cmos for about a half hour try that. I hate to say it but you may have borked the board but I didn't really want to go there yet.
Click to expand...

I looked everywhere inside, and didn't see any sort of CMOS battery.

I did pull the main battery and held the power down for about 60 seconds. when I plugged it back in and went to BIOS, I did see the system date and time had been reset. So I'll assuming that means the bios also reset. But still no change to the problem.
 
If this was me, I would order a new battery, if that didn't work I would get a replacement board. If it's time sensitive order both, make sure returns are allowed... This doesn't sound good.

If you have a universal ac adapter try that too.
 
CLC said:
If this was me, I would order a new battery, if that didn't work I would get a replacement board. If it's time sensitive order both, make sure returns are allowed... This doesn't sound good.
Click to expand...

yeah... doesn't sound good at all. Thing is, I can't verify if this problem existed before I replaced the keyboard. If the computer was plugged in most of the time, I could see how the customer wouldn't have noticed the problem.

When originally troubleshooting, I turned it on and tested the keys, and found a bunch of them didn't work, so I quoted the keyboard replacement. I didn't really look at the battery icon, only noticed it after the replacement happened and was checking everything over before calling for pickup. The only keyboard I could find for this computer took 2 weeks to arrive.

Doing a quick look, I can't even find a board for this particular model unless I go to ebay and buy one form china, which will take a month to get here, and costs $400. Its also possible I wait a month, shell out $400 and still have the problem.

Maybe I'll get lucky and its simply the battery... but I have a bad feeling its deeper than that.
 
This really sucks for you depending on the customer, they could be like everything was fine with the battery until....... You just never know, best thing to do is be honest with them in my experience and see how things shake out. I have a bad feeling too, but maybe your customer is will be understanding and tell the truth, I've had both. Not all customers are bad believe it or not.
 
We have 3 Asus laptops personally that get flipped out when their batteries age. They have no clue where the battery pack is at in its charge. The only replacements are the $65 ones but they do seem to fix the problem.

One thought - Start up the laptop without a battery and insert the battery hot (while the laptop is up and running). Sometimes I get lucky that way and it wakes up and sees things right.
 
drnick5 said:
I looked everywhere inside, and didn't see any sort of CMOS battery.
Click to expand...
I don't know about this particular model, but a laptop with a fixed, internal battery may use the main battery for maintaining the CMOS when powered off, so disconnecting the battery leads to corruption.

If you can get into the BIOS with the charger connected, reset the BIOS to default and see if that helps.
 
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