[WillCrichton]

Hi there,

On my rather elderly laptop, the battery life is negligible - like a minute's worth. Not a problem since I basically use it as a desktop, but recently the laptop has been iffy with recognising my power cord - it'll show up that I'm on battery life and I have to remove the cord and plug it back in. If I'm away when this happens, it can cause me to lose work and losing power like that can't be too good for my laptop.

Also showing up is an error saying that my battery life file is corrupt and that I need to run chkdsk /f. I get the feeling that this would resolve everything, but unfortunately I can't do this because for some reason my computer automatically skips chkdsk every time I try to run it. AVG is running and doesn't report anything, and I've run CCleaner (not touching the advanced tabs though since I'm not too computer literate). I'm thinking that I have a constantly depressed esc key (esc no longer does anything when my computer's turned on, but every other key works). Now, is there any way to effectively turn off my keyboard until chkdsk has run, or run a chkdsk equivalent without restarting?

Thanks very much.
Will

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Hello,
You can run check disc from the recovery console
How to run checkdisk from recovery console (Windows xp). (Courtesy dsenette)
1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Note:Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted to do so.
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Note:If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
3. When you are prompted to do so, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
4. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type the following then press Enter:
chkdsk /r
5. Allow this to run UNDISTURBED until completed (45 min or so)

I think that the problem with your power cord may be a loose connection with the jack. Try wiggling the cord with very little pressure and see if that does any thing.

[hfcg]

Hello,
You can run check disc from the recovery console
How to run checkdisk from recovery console (Windows xp). (Courtesy dsenette)
1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Note:Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted to do so.
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Note:If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
3. When you are prompted to do so, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
4. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type the following then press Enter:
chkdsk /r
5. Allow this to run UNDISTURBED until completed (45 min or so)

I think that the problem with your power cord may be a loose connection with the jack. Try wiggling the cord with very little pressure and see if that does any thing.

[WillCrichton]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I inherited my laptop from my brother and I don't have any of the disks. Wiggling the cord doesn't cause it to switch to battery power. It just seems to happen at arbitrary moments.

[hfcg]

Here is a link that you can download the recovery console to your desktop.
And here is a link that tells you how to make the disc.
This is used to repair your computer, using the proper utilitys.