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
STEP TWO
Device Manager - Batteries
- 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.
