Laptop battery not charging
 

I have a Toshiba Satellite C55-A5302 laptop that the battery is not charging in. The battery icon on panel says that it's charging 0.0% and never changes. If I unplug the charger the laptop shuts down immediately. I tried shutting the laptop down removing the battery and charger and holding the power button down for 10 seconds but it did not make a difference. I am running Linux Mint release 1 Debian, Kernel Linux 3.11-2-amd64, Mate 1.6.1. The results of the upower command is:

kuser@khost ~ $ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
model: PA5109U-1BRS
serial: C06F
power supply: yes
updated: Tue 24 Jun 2014 10:43:15 AM PDT (5 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: charging
energy: 0 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 45.36 Wh
energy-full-design: 47.52 Wh
energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 10.8 V
percentage: 0%
capacity: 95.4545%
technology: lithium-ion

I tried a different charger and it did not make a difference. I did see something about the bios keeping two version of the battery info, one for Windows and one for Linux, with the Linux one being bad but that was suppose to have been corrected with Kernel 3.11. The laptop is only about 1 year old. Is there something else to try before buying another battery?

I would say try cleaning the contacts if that doen't work buy the battery.

If you have a voltmeter, and know how to do this:

Take the battery out of the computer and measure voltage on the battery. If it shows as zero, then the battery is unable to be used.

Newer battery packs have a low voltage cutoff point where if they drop below that level, a circuit activates to disconnect the battery and disallow it from ever being charged. Therefore you can have a brand new battery, but if it dropped below some voltage level, this could've occurred and the battery is now unusable. You can't recover it with any normal activities; just someone who knows the design of that battery pack might be able to by either replacing that circuit or bypassing that circuit to bring the voltage up to a high enough level so that the circuit will now allow charging.

The battery could also be flawed and be some voltage level, but rapidly drop because it won't keep a charge for some reason.

10.3 Volts
 

The battery had 10.3 volts on the outside set of contacts. It had 9 contacts and I didn't try every possible combination but 10.3 was the highest voltage I could find. I tried cleaning the contacts but they looked clean. I will call around to see if anyone can reset a battery.

You can't reset batteries. (normally normal people can't)

You are still in limbo. You don't know if you are charging correctly and you don't know if battery is good. You meant to say you used a different ac adapter but you didn't change the charger.

If the battery is 3 to 4 years old or more, I'd suspect that first but they are expensive to guess with.

I've heard that some batteries will enter a slow-charge mode if the voltage gets too low...have you tried turning it off and leaving it plugged in over the weekend?

If the problem is that there is a circuit that ddetects that the voltage is too low, I've read about how some people have opened up the battery pack and directly charged the individual cells with a bench supply or similar. Never tried it myself (never had a reason, my batteries are still fine (knock on wood)) This will definitely viod your warranty, though it seems like it's old enough that the warranty is gone anyway.

Hope this helps!

Either a faulty battery ( as others have suggested ) or there is a problem with the charging hardware in the laptop. Either way its probably nothing you can do. I would try charging the battery with the computer off and see if it ever charges the battery. Also did this start occurring for you or has it never charged the battery? Is this a new laptop?

I would agree that the battery is probably gone, and point out additionally that it is generally not safe to mess around with laptop batteries. Chuck it and buy a new one. If that too doesn't work, get the laptop repaired. Now you have two batteries. Use one till it dies, then use the other. Batteries are not user serviceable. There's nothing to do but dispose of them safely.

I believe that there's something wrong with that laptop accepting power from the batteries:

1. Either the contacts on the laptop side are bad and not allowing energy transfer from battery to laptop.
2. The circuitry inside the laptop has had a component failure and therefore no battery is ever going to work with it.

It's not worth it to see if anyone can help reset a battery, my point was that they have protective circuits which might have been the problem. The manufacturer could do that and might if it were cost effective. Since it does have voltage, then it's not cut of via any protective circuit.

Most laptop batteries ARE 10.8V max, 6 cell LiON batteries. The charger will say something like "Input 120-240 VAC", and then "Output 19 VDC" and state the current values/limits. Given a voltage measurement of 10.3 volts, I don't think there's ANYTHING wrong with that battery. Look for a sticker on your battery, it probably says 10.8 V.

The nominal LiON "cell" voltage is 3.7 volts. That's a 6 cell battery; the cells are likely in two banks of 3 cells in series, max voltage is 11.1 V.

These numbers are "nominal"; the 3.7 is "newly manufactured/best rating", you can get cells which give you higher voltage, but we're talking +/- 0.2 for some range of 3.5 - 3.9. The laptop probably can run given voltages from 12 down to some number, but probably a good value below 10.3, probably 7 or 6 volts. That 19 provided by the charger/power cord both powers the laptop and also provides charge to the battery, if the battery doesn't need charge, that's fine the voltage is still regulated by internal circuitry to a lesser value to run the electronics.

Battery on order
 

I ordered a new battery off of Amazon today. I will post the results when I get it. I am thinking my battery may have 10.3 volts but not the current capacity to run anything. Thanks for the help.

It is still a gamble. There isn't an easy way to test the charging ability of the laptop without a known good battery.

another "hack" idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtqR...94CE73F09A60BA

Replacing batteries in a pack
 

I don't know if I could get the pack apart without breaking it. The guy in the video found a good deal on the batteries but it is still about the same as I paid for the pack. If the new pack works I might try taking the old one apart and replacing the cells. All I need is a battery that will let me move the laptop from room to room without shutting it down. The old pack was just a little over a year old.

I love this and have done it before!!! :D

Replacing battery corrected problem.
 

I ordered a new battery from Amazon and now the laptop is reporting the charge again. The battery was $38 and $6.50 shipping. It would have cost me almost that much to replace the cells and then there is the possibility that they could catch fire or explode.
Thanks for the help.