laptop battery problem

tramni1980 · 10-14-2010, 02:44 AM

Dear Slackers,
I have a Toshiba Tecra S11-11H PTSE3E-00W00UG3 laptop. Yesterday I made a mistake leaving it to work for several hours in console mode until the batter got utterly exhausted. I then charged it for 8 hours and the battery LED turned green. However, the battery monitoring widgets of both KDE and XFCE4 still claim that the battery is empty (0%).

Here is the output of some console commands:

Code:

marto@marto:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info 
present:                 yes
design capacity:         0 mWh
last full capacity:      0 mWh
battery technology:      non-rechargeable
design voltage:          0 mV
design capacity warning: 0 mWh
design capacity low:     0 mWh
cycle count:              0
capacity granularity 1:  0 mWh
capacity granularity 2:  0 mWh
model number:            C±¿
serial number:           C±¿
battery type:            
OEM info:

and

Code:

marto@marto:~$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charging
present rate:            22870 mW
remaining capacity:      49498 mWh
present voltage:         65910 mV

I have noticed that before the complete discharge, the battery type was recognised as Li-Ion and certainly there were no "?" symbols in the battery serial and model numbers.

Obviously something has happened with the kernel recognising the battery. The battery could not be actually gone since the battery LED is green. Is this a software problem or do I have to contact the toshiba service? I want to have some clue, because toshiba only supports windows and will not provide any help in case of software problems.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Regards,

Martin

Mark_in_Hollywood · 10-14-2010, 05:07 PM

My GUESS is remove the battery. Allow the laptop to be unpowered overnight. Plug the battery back in. If that works, OK, if not, remove battery and find the CMOS battery and remove it as well, overnight. If you are not "tech" enough to disassemble and reassemble the laptop, DONT DO IT. If you remove the CMOS battery you will have to re-set the BIOS, but that's a small price to pay.

Have a Linux boot CD or bootable thumb drive available.

good luck