Charge rate: 0 MW

[richalt2]

I'm having trouble with a new Dell E6430 laptop where the battery seems never to charge. Windows 7 shows 30% and BatteryBar also says 30%. I can run for days on ac adapter. When I disconnect AC the battery goes down. I connect AC again and it never goes up.
Battery bar says:
Capacity: 28,061 mWh of 93,007 mWh
Charge rate: 0 mW
Battery: unknown (Charging)
Full Runtime: Calculating...
A/C: Connected
Battery Wear: 6.9% of 99,900 mWh

These values have not changed in a hour of AC time, since I installed BatteryBar.
I have gotten a swapped battery from Dell. No change, except the % started out at about 35% on the 2nd battery. Neither battery will show any charging. I don't know if in fact the batteries are charged!

I have the feeling this is a Windows 7 bug.
Any suggestions?

[Chris]

Windows is not responsible for the charging of the battery, that's done by the chip in the battery and the BIOS. If you really want to verify, download and boot an Ubuntu linux LiveCD and check the battery stats in linux. I would suspect an issue with the battery but if you're saying that it's doing it on two batteries, then it could be your power supply not providing enough current or another issue with the laptop. Have you tried charging with the machine completely powered off?

As a last resort, you can try 'calibrating' the battery by discharging it to 0% (boot into SETUP mode and leave it running until it turns itself off) then plugging it in and charging it while it's off over night. The problem with this is that if the battery already has a bad cell, this could actually damage the battery (I have one here in my office that exploded internally, luckily the case didn't rupture).

[jack hussey]

windows is not responsible for charging you have to check the power connection port might be there could be a problem