Samsung r700 battery problem!

[jimmy]

My reportage laptop, a samsung R700, has gone nuts. The battery is full but it won't switch on without the mains power, and indeed if I unplug the mains power it just switches off - even though in windows it sees the battery and reports it being 100% full..........

When it comes to doing some race reporting and running of a generator at a national I can't rely on constant power at all, so this is a big problem as I'll end up losing work constantly as the power dips and and out during the day - and ofcourse I can't continue reporting into the evening when people switch off their generators etc.


Anyone had such a problem or can think of a way of fixing it? We only have a little netbook thing otherwise and I can't really do much of a race report on that.

[bigred5765]

is windows reporting it right?on my dell there is a little set of led thingys on the back of the battery with a button, lights up and says how much is in it,or may be a bent pin??

[James]

My old Packard Bell did this even though the battery was charged.. Bought a new battery and it worked fine.. weird

[jimmy]

Yeah it's got a button on the battery and it lights up as full........! not looked at batteries yet but it's yet more cash to throw at something I need it to be reliable and so far I've loved this laptop - but it's let me down now and I can't trust it!

[jimmy]

Just tried another battery from another similar Samsung and it was fine - so I guess the batteries don't last long This lappy was bought for the neo08 so its only a little over a year old and not been used that much since I have a PC at home, it's mostly used for races and mostly plugged in all the time.

The worry this weekend (before my replacement battery arrives) is that the power will go off and I lose the race report at some point(s) which will be a bit pants. Oh well it could be worse I guess.

[DCM]

try open office, if that is of any good for you, it auto saves your work, and has a file recovery feature.

[Southwell]

Originally Posted by jimmy

mostly plugged in all the time.

Thats more than likely the problem. Laptop batteries don't like being just charged all the time, you have to give them a cycle often or they will start false charging.
One thing i did to recover mine (partly) was to boot into Ubuntu (boot from cd), it read the state of the battery correctly, then it all started working again. Could be worth a try.