Hello.
I have a small problem here. My notebook battery is not charging to 100% any more. This week after I drained the batteries, I put it to charge up as normally. Everything was fine, until the indicator showed 80%. Here the charge stopped, and nothing could be done. I discharged it again, but it didn't fix the problem.

Its not really a linux issue, since this is the same story with windows too. 80% and not going further.

Usually, when I charge the battery, the lamp on the notebook turns to orange continuous light. When its fully charged, the lamp goes to green. Now, when the charge state reached 80%, the lamp started to flash with an orange light. I never saw this before, so I don't know what does this mean.

I searched the manual for instructions, but nothing was said about orange flashing light.

If it helps, I have a BenQ Joybook 2100e notebook, with Mepis 7.0 and WinXP installed on it.
The problem occurred during WinXP usage.
Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks.

Can you see if there is something like "battery setup" in BIOS.

Do you know the type of battery? NI-MH, Li-ion etc?
Is there a charge indicator on the battery itself? If so what percentage of charge does it show.

Depending on the age of the battery and how many cycles (this term can vary in its meaning) it may not be able to charge to its full state anymore. Or the battery might require a "recalibration".

Unfortunatelly there is nothing like that in my BIOS. The BIOS is very very simple here. Even in my old pentium3 PC the BIOS is much much more complex than in here.
Well, yes. I forgot to mention. I have a Li-ion battery. The notebook is 2 years old now (and the battery too of course).
It doesn't have an indicator.
How is that done? Could you explain it please? Maybe that could fix this problem.

1. Plug in the power adapter and fully charge your laptop's battery until the light ring or LED on the power adapter plug changes to green and the onscreen meter in the menu bar indicates that the battery is fully charged.
2. Allow the battery to rest in the fully charged state for at least two hours. You may use your computer during this time as long as the adapter is plugged in.
3. Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialogue on the screen.
4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.
5. Turn off the computer or allow it to sleep for five hours or more.
6. Connect the power adapter and leave it connected until the battery is fully charged again.

I've seen several different methods depend for recalibrating. It basically just helps the computer display accurate charge information. Hopefully it will work for you.

Dear michaelk!
Thanks for the suggestion, it worked. I fully discharged the battery yesterday evening, and left it uncharged for the night. Today I plugged in the AC adapter, and now it charged to 100%, and the indicator LED is now green again! The method of yours worked.
Thanks again.

I am going to try this method; I have lost 2 batteries already; this one (dell vostro 3700 purchased August 2010) only 10 months old and is charging to 65% (max). Will post if it works or not. fingers crossed.

hey what do i do.....i'm running my laptop with no battery....
my laptop is also 2 years old but i'd like to say that Li-ion batteries have a limited recharge cycle and that must have been over..
once my laptop suddenly switched off and then never started on battery only...my battery indicator shows 0% battery(connected,not charging)....
when i contacted officials they asked to remove the battery to check if there is any problem with adapter...
but it worked fine so i removed battery forever...but it won't do like this any more ,so i'm planning to buy a new battery now.