Saturday, June 18, 2016

Happy Birthday, Paul

We would like to wish Sir Paul McCartney a very happy birthday.

74 years old today...

I remember listening to "When I'm Sixty Four" back in June 1967 when Sgt Pepper's came out. Paul was only 25 (going on 26) at the time and I couldn't imagine any of The Beatles ever being that old... that would be like Dean Martin! Ooh, yuk! Dino was only 50 then but to a pre-teen he seemed ancient.

So Happy Birthday to you and many happy returns!

Friday, June 17, 2016

[SOLVED] Problem with new laptop battery

UPDATED July 17, 2016: SEE BELOW

Last week one of our laptops (Toshiba Satellite C75D-A7370, Windows 8.1) started shutting down unexpectedly. A couple of days later we noticed that the battery was not lasting very long. Hmmmm, time to go shopping.

We found a place on eBay that had our battery for a good price, free shipping, and they would send to us via US Mail (USPS).

We installed the battery per instructions. The instructions were poorly translated but basically boiled down to: insert battery, let it run down to 8%, then fully charge to 100%. Of course there was the usual warnings about not carrying this out in the bathtub, etc.

All was going well except that after 30 minutes the battery icon was still displaying 100% even though the time left was ticking down normally.  Houston, we have a problem.

Time to search the internet for a solution which I found here...

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/Battery-Indicator-shows-100-charged-at-all-times/m-p/1303533#M196993

STEP ONE
  • Shut down the notebook
  • Unplug the AC Adapter
  • Remove the battery
  • Then hold down the Power button for 30 seconds
Device Manager - Batteries
STEP TWO
  • Plug in the AC adapter without the battery inserted
  • Start the notebook
  • Open Device Manager
  • Expand the entry for Batteries
  • Right click Microsoft ACPI Compliant Control Method Battery
  • Select Uninstall - do not uninstall anything else here.

STEP THREE
  • When the uninstall is complete, shut down the notebook
  • Unplug the AC Adapter
  • Re-insert the battery
  • Start the notebook on just the battery.

Windows will automatically reinstall the driver - leave Windows running for a few minutes and see if the charge level decreases as it should.

Problem solved. The battery power percentage is displaying properly and the new battery is lasting much longer... sort of like when the computer was new :)

Well, we are happy with this and we are buying another battery for our other computer as it is only a matter of time before that one will fritz out.

UPDATED July 17, 2016:  A couple of days ago we swapped out the battery for our other Toshiba Satellite laptop.  No problem. Showed 100% to start and then counted down to 8% whereupon we plugged the charger in.

Hope this helps if you are having problems with a new battery displaying correctly.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Apologies for lack of blogging...

Sorry for my lack of blogging but I've had issues with my eyesight for several months. I could not work for much more than an hour on the computer and even with that short timespan I experienced eye soreness, general fatigue, double vision, etc.

But, now that seems to be all sorted out and I'm a much happier camper... Yippee!