Laptop Battery Repair
Laptop Battery Repair Methods
At about $100 on average, laptop batteries are quite expensive, so replacing them often is not an option for most people. This piece of equipment is designed to last about 2 years under normal circumstances, but its life period can often be shorter.
Therefore, if your battery has died or is about to die, but your laptop works fine otherwise, even though it may be old, the most obvious solution is to take it to a repair shop near you. The pros there should be able to fix the battery so that you don’t have to purchase a new one just yet.
If you are more of a DIY person or simply want to save some money, here are some things you can try at home. Before you attempt to repair your laptop on your own, please take a moment to consider how dangerous it can be. Lithium-ion batteries in particular are flammable and can cause an explosion.
Also ,note that not all methods (both those here and those that you can read or watch online) are suitable for all battery types. The tips below work mostly for lithium ion laptops.
Method 1 : Laptop Battery Repair / Reconditioning
Recommendation : If you want to restore your battery to work well just like new one . Try this . (Easy to follow )
This method should be listed first because it’s one of the safest way you may use to recondition your laptop battery & make it back to good condition just like a new battery . This works for MOST of battery conditions & problems. View more detail below :
Method 2 : Cool your computer down
Recommendation : If your laptop battery got slow down , try this (easy to follow)
Many laptop batteries today feature lithium ion cells that need to stay cool if the battery is to live longer. So, if your battery still works, but shows clear signs of slowing down because it gets too hot, the answer is simple: get a laptop cooling pad. The pad can cost up to 5 times less than a brand new battery, and it will prevent your laptop from losing charge as fast.
Method 3 : Swap cells
Recommendation : This works for battery that have dead cells which we can replace (It’s pretty advanced method )
If you fully charge your laptop, but the battery dies within an hour, then the cells inside may be dead. Note that circuits can become locked when they detect a serious problem, such as one dead cell in the battery – then they enter the “Permanent Failure” mode. That’s because one cell that stops working can unbalance the entire battery, causing it to overheat, blow a fuse, and lock itself.
Here’s what you can do to fix this problem:
- Purchase from your laptop repair shop one dead battery; this shouldn’t cost a lot. Get your multimeter, some wire, electric tape, and a wire cutter.
- Next, open the dead battery you got from the shop, but do this carefully, without damaging the battery box. Take out the 6 cells by cutting the series connection; leave the parallel connection intact (the 6 cells are connected 2 by 2).
- Then, check the voltage of each lithium cell with your multimeter; this should be at least 3.6 volts for the cells to be any good. The battery pack should be 12 volts overall.
- Assuming that they are good, it’s time to connect the cells in a series connection; use your wire for this.
- Now gently open your own laptop battery (the one you want to fix) and check the voltage; if some of the cells are still good, then keep them. Recycle the bad ones (don’t just throw them away, especially if they are lithium cells).
- Note this works mostly for lithium ion cells. With Lenovo or IBM batteries, you can disconnect the cells, but they are not safe to reconnect as they will blow a fuse.
- Either way, keep the circuit. Now connect the battery pack to the circuit. Both have 4 wires; the two wires in the middle of the battery pack are positive, as is the one at the end. On the other hand, the longest wire coming out from the circuit is negative, while the other 3 are positive.
- After connecting the battery pack to the circuit, it’s time to connect the battery circuit to the laptop. Press the power button to check whether it is working. If it doesn’t work, then connect the charger to the laptop, wait 5 minutes before removing the charger, and it should work.
- Finally, carefully place the circuit and the battery pack in the original battery box. You may need some glue or tape to secure them in the battery box.
Method 4 : Recalibrate the battery
Recommendation : When your battery is dying which made your OS couldn’t show properly battery capacity level . (easy to follow )
If your laptop still works, but its operating system is confused regarding the capacity of the battery, it means you have an old battery that is dying and that may need recalibrating.
When this is the case, the operating system often shows you still have a certain number of minutes remaining, but the battery either outlasts that or dies either much sooner. Other times, the battery is unable to fully charge, no matter how long you keep it plugged in.
The main reasons behind this problem are:
- a) you never allowed the battery to become fully discharged, or
- b) you always keep your laptop plugged in.
Regardless of the cause, there are two ways to solve this problem. The first one is to look up online your computer model and battery calibration, and you may just be able to find a calibration tool designed and released specifically for your laptop model; you stand the best chance if you own a newer laptop.
If you cannot find the right tool online, you will have to recalibrate the battery manually; here’s how:
- Charge the battery to the maximum percentage it can reach, even though it may not be 100%. Allow it to cool down for 2 hours or so.
- Unplug the battery once it has cooled and let it drain, while keeping the display on until that happens. The easiest way is to just wait around until the battery discharges and the laptop shuts down. Alternatively, you can set the laptop to hibernate when the battery reaches 3% or so.
- Either way, once the laptop is turned off, do not turn it back on for the next 3 to 5 hours.
- Only then can you turn it on. Charge the battery to the fullest – this time it should be able to reach 100%.
