[segerkm]

I used to get a good 3-4 hours out of the thing. A few months ago (when it was just barely a year old), I noticed that I was getting less and less time out of it. Over the course of about two months, I went from getting 3-4 hours to getting about 10 minutes.

I turned off the power management setting that makes the laptop shut down and/or hibernate when the battery gets low (because I think this was causing it to not fully discharge). Since then, I've noticed that even though I get the critical battery warning, it still sometimes runs for 15-30 more minutes before shutting down.

I've tried booting to system set-up and letting the battery fully discharge from there, but after a couple of minutes of inactivity, the thing automatically boots to Windows. I think booting from a start-up disk would serve the same purpose, but I don't have the first clue as to how to do that (both how to create a start-up disk and then how to boot from it). I also don't have a floppy drive, but have a CD/RW drive as well as a flash drive (but can you boot from a flash drive?).

Is any of this worth trying? If I can figure out how to completely discharge the battery and then recharge it a few times, will I see any significant improvement or is it totally fried?

I really don't have $100 to sink into a new battery. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Kathleen

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www.bootdisk.com you can get a boot disk image from there...you can also actuallly get a boot cdrom image there as well..with which you would ust boot to the cd and let it just sit there till it dies...i'd also check your power cable and the connection to the laptop to make sure thoser are ok

[dsenette]

www.bootdisk.com you can get a boot disk image from there...you can also actuallly get a boot cdrom image there as well..with which you would ust boot to the cd and let it just sit there till it dies...i'd also check your power cable and the connection to the laptop to make sure thoser are ok

[segerkm]

Thanks! I'm assuming the power cable and connection are good as it runs fine on AC/DC power (I did have a problem with that about a year ago and had to have the motherboard replaced... but this is a different problem entirely).