Laptop battery charge indicator. Battery Mode – battery indicator and advanced power management for Windows devices

Most laptops use a series of lights to indicate the state of the computer.

Each indicator has several states, such as on, off, slow flashing or fast flashing.

They can also switch between different colors (a lot depends on the model).

Each computer manufacturer uses its own codes to indicate the charging status of a laptop, but there are some common features.

• NOTE: If you have problems with the charge indicator, the first thing I recommend is to calibrate the battery. How?

Charger

Most laptops show a green, blue or purple light to indicate that the battery is fully charged.

Many manufacturers indicate that a laptop is in the process of charging by showing a steady or flashing green, orange, blue or purple light.

If the battery indicator is green, blue or purple, then the battery is functional, no matter whether the light flashes color or not.

If the light is on orange, the laptop is most likely in the process of charging.

Battery error

Many battery manufacturers use flashing lights to indicate that the battery's charge level is low.

In general, a laptop will quickly flash orange or red when its charge drops below a certain level while the computer is not plugged in.

If your laptop's battery light continues to rapidly flash orange or red, or if it remains red even when it is plugged into the charger, this indicates a problem with your battery or charger.

Windows charging indicator

If you're not sure what the light means, you can check your computer's charging status in Windows.

Look for the battery icon in the notification area of ​​the taskbar. If the display icon shows an electrical connector on the battery, then it is currently charging or is fully charged.

A red "X" on the battery icon will appear on the screen when Windows detects battery problems.

Hover your mouse over the icon to view the current battery level. Then a tooltip will appear with information about the current charge level and charge status.

Reset

If your laptop battery is not charging, you can solve this problem by doing full reset. Turn off the computer and disconnect it from charger and remove the battery.

Follow your computer manufacturer's instructions to remove the battery.

On some computers, you may need to hold down the computer's power button for 30 seconds to reset the battery status information.

Install the battery, connect the charger, and turn on the laptop.

Replacing the battery

Over time, some batteries lose their ability to receive or hold a charge.

If your laptop battery refuses to charge, even after removal and reinstallation, you may need to purchase a new battery.

If your laptop is under warranty, or your computer manufacturer has issued a recall on your computer's batteries, you may be able to get new battery for free. Good luck.

Three years later, the laptop began to hold the battery for about 40 minutes instead of four hours, we decided to figure out what the reason was and find ways to solve it. For those who don't want to buy a new battery.

At first glance, the reason is obvious - the laptop battery is worn out. But I still wanted to get to the bottom of the truth and solve the problem. Our battery number is PA3832.

IN modern Li-ion batteries have a controller responsible for the battery charge; it counts the number of charge-discharge cycles and calculates the percentage of battery wear. Usually after long work batteries, the controller may give incorrect data and needs to be calibrated.

Battery controller calibration

Download and install a program for monitoring battery status BattareyBar Pro.

In terms of power supply, we set the following values:

Find out the full capacity of the battery

We disconnect the charging from the laptop and note the operating time until the message “a few minutes left until complete discharge battery." Then we reboot the system, go into Bios and note the time until complete shutdown laptop. If it works in this mode long time, which means there is still some reserve in the battery. If it works for up to 10 minutes, then everything is fine with the controller and the battery needs to be changed or repacked.

Calibration

In essence, calibration is a complete discharge and full charge of the battery in several cycles to change the battery controller data.

If the battery is completely discharged, you need to charge it immediately, because Li-ion batteries They are afraid of being completely discharged and may fail. After the system reports that the battery is charged, you should wait a few more hours until it is truly fully charged.

Previously, we tracked battery life in Windows and after that in Bios. Now we need to add up this time, and we will get the approximate operating time of our battery. We got 50 minutes + 40 minutes = 1 hour 20 minutes.

After fully charged disconnect the charger and look in the BattareyBar Pro program to see how much time is left. If the time has increased, then the calibration was successful; if not, we proceed to the second stage of calibration.

So as not to watch boring Bios screen, further actions will be on Windows.

We disconnect a fully charged laptop from the charger, record the time and monitor the battery discharge through our program. When the system writes that there is 1 minute left, let the laptop work without load for the time it worked in Bios, subtracting 10 minutes from it. If you have a battery indicator on your laptop, plug in the charger when it starts flashing.

In our case it is 40 -10 = 30 minutes. When this time has passed, we connect the charger again and, repeating this process again, work with the laptop in normal mode. During operation, after a while the battery will show the correct data.

Repacking the battery

Previously, our laptop had 4 hours of battery life, an additional 30 minutes after calibration was not enough, so we decided to replace the batteries in the battery.

First, it was necessary to disassemble the battery without damaging it. In the video you can watch the process of disassembling the battery.

The next step is to find out, using a cup, a tester and a light bulb, how worn out the batteries are in the battery. Having built simple diagram, in the photo below

and having discharged the battery to 10.5 volts using a light bulb, all that remains is to measure each pair of batteries under load and calculate the weakest link. The battery that discharges the fastest is the problem one.

After a little manipulation, it was possible to determine that the batteries were worn out almost equally and there was no obvious weak link, so you need to change all pairs.

Having bought the batteries, all that remains is to replace them; if you are not comfortable with a soldering iron, we do not recommend that you do this.

After repacking, the assembly turned out like this; the lid was not put on in order to measure the battery voltage during operation. You need to solder while trying to heat the batteries as little as possible. It is advisable to use resistance welding instead of a soldering iron.

By inserting the battery and turning on the computer, we fully charged it within 6 hours, always under supervision. A fully charged battery should read 12.6 volts; a discharged battery should show 10.6 volts.

You also need to measure three pairs of batteries for the same voltage 12.6 / 3 = 4.2 volts. If the indicators are different, discharge those pairs( light bulb), where the voltage is greater to the same values.

After disconnecting the charger, the operating time showed the same as on the old battery. For correct information About the battery, you need to flash its controller by resetting the number of charge cycles to 0.

Since we did not have the tools to program the controller, we decided to calibrate the battery using the method described above. As a result, within two days of working with the laptop, the system began to show correct battery data. Our battery shows and runs 3 hours 40 minutes.

Conclusions

The easiest way to extend the life of your battery is to calibrate its controller if it shows incorrect data and the batteries are still working. Not all controllers can be configured this way, so it depends on your luck.

If you are comfortable with a soldering iron, you can restore the battery life almost like new. The main problem is finding batteries for repackaging. Ideal option take them from working battery a new non-repairable laptop. If there is none, look for ebay.com or dx.com suitable according to the parameters.

A useful free utility for laptops that replaces the standard battery charge indicator and offers useful additional features. BatteryCare adds its own icon to the system tray, which, when the power is turned off, changes to two numbers - battery charge in percentage and a forecast of the remaining operating time in hours/minutes. Standard icon Windows Power Options can be hidden, the font color of the BatteryCare icon is customizable. The utility can calculate the operating time forecast independently, based on accumulated statistical data (the time until automatic shutdown/sleep or until complete discharge, at the user’s choice, is displayed).

When you hover over the icon, a window appears with the most important information: charge and remaining operating time, processor temperature and hard drive, current energy saving plan (“ maximum performance", "balanced", "energy saving", etc.). The figure for the discharge and charge power of the battery in watts is useful for assessing the level of consumption of individual system components and in general, fine tuning energy saving modes. It is curious that the temperature values Core processor 2 Duo T9300 and hard drive from BatteryCare did not match Open utilities data Hardware Monitor(from ) and , which is noticeable in the screenshot.

When you double-click on the icon, the main BatteryCare window opens, which, when you select the “Advanced” tab, shows a lot of interesting information about the battery. The battery manufacturer and nominal capacity are indicated, in addition to the same charge/discharge rates, the current maximum capacity and degree of wear, data on calibrations performed are visible.

On this useful features BatteryCare doesn't end there. When changing the power source, the utility can automatically activate the desired power plan. For example, switching to “energy saving” when switching to a battery, and when power returns from the network, activating back the “maximum performance” mode.

It is possible to activate pop-up notifications about the battery's full charge, low/critical percentage discharge (the degree is configurable), as well as N minutes before the end of work. Notification is also possible sound alerts. To save battery when unplugged, BatteryCare can automatically turn off Aero effects, side Windows panel and stop some services. Statistics are kept on the number of discharge cycles and calibrations; past indicators can be manually added to the values. After a certain number of cycles, a reminder may be displayed to require a complete discharge for calibration. There is an automatic update.

IN new version BatteryCare 0.9.10.0:

• Added optional sound notifications.
• The procedure for calculating temperatures of Intel processors has been updated.
• Minor bugs fixed.

Among free utilities This kind of BatteryCare perhaps offers the maximum number of possibilities.

BatteryCare 0.9.10.0(Windows, freeware)

• installer - SetupBatteryCare.zip (1.4 MB)
• portable - BatteryCarePortable.zip (1.1 MB)

The laptop battery is designed to last for several hours without being connected to the network. The standard resource is 100 charges and discharges, and it does not matter whether the resource consumption was partial or complete. The battery heating is controlled by a thermistor (temperature sensor).

Indicator functions
The battery charge is displayed in the notification area in the lower right corner. In Windows 7, it is possible to select a convenient power management scheme through the battery indicator or disable this icon through the “Properties” menu. Through the same menu you can return it back.

The battery charge indicator shows the current charge status in percentage and notifies you of the remaining battery life. offline mode. Time display on indicators is not always accurate. It can change dramatically with different RAM and processor load. Beep will warn you if the laptop battery charge is low.

When plugged into a power outlet, a picture of a power plug appears in the tray and the current charge level is reported as a percentage.

Power Management Schemes
Saving battery power is possible by selecting one of the specified schemes:
1. Energy saving - reduces the performance and brightness of the PC during operation.
2. Balanced – maintains battery charge level during idle time.

Some PCs have a special driver to optimize battery performance. Sometimes it does not function correctly, particularly on Lenovo laptops. The battery is charged halfway and the process stops. The lock can only be removed by manually changing the parameters.

Reduced energy consumption
The savings will become noticeable if you disable unused programs, wireless communication, ports, reduce the sound level, remove unused USB devices.
You can save battery power if you lower the brightness and use simple analogues instead of powerful utilities.
It is better to choose sleep mode instead of standby mode.
It is not recommended to place the laptop on a sofa, armchair, etc. This way it cools worse, and extreme temperatures rapidly reduce the laptop’s battery charge.

To prevent the battery from deteriorating...
After fully charging, you need to disconnect the laptop from the network and do not charge it again until it is completely discharged. Periodically, a completely discharged battery should be removed and the metal contacts wiped with a soft cloth lightly moistened with alcohol.

Control widgets
Battery monitoring is possible through applications that can be downloaded for Windows 7. Widgets like Hud Launch Battery, Laptop Gauges, Battery Meter are easy to download for free. The Computer Status gadget has a similar principle of operation, which shows full information about the PC status.