Laptop Battery

Battery is standby power that is used to power laptops in the absense of AC power. Many people complain about battery life. Please see that the batteries are consummable items that are bound to degrade with time whether you use it or not. This is the reason most computer manufactures only provide one year warranty on battery irrespective the warranty on the computer is more than one year.

Technically cells connected in series is called battery. So there are batteries with cell the numbers mentioned (4-cell battery, 6-cell battery, etc.). Generally there are 4-9cell batteries which are more widely used. More the number of cells more is the backup. In laptops Lithium ion batteries are widely used.

What to do if you feel that battery is not working properly?

Well first of all check the battery LED on the computer. Almost all computers have battery status LED that show the status of the battery ( Charging, low power, trickle mode, etc.). Also you will find the status for battery in left hand corner on the taskbar. If there is some unusual behaviour such as but not limited to:

Battery LED on the computer is not green ( Green LED means that the battery is either charging or in trickle mode)
System shutdowns as soon as you disconnect the AC adapter.
Battery LED is not lit when AC adapter (Charger) is connected.

Then it is time to check for battery. The easiest way to check this is to do two-way swap. Put a working known good battery in your system (nowdays it is not difficult to arrange one as everybody has laptop computers). If the known good battery works fine then the issue is with the battery. However just to be sure put your non-working battery in a known good computer. This will make sure that the issue is in fact with the battery and therefore needs replacement.

What if the battery works fine in known good system then it is time to check for AC adapter. Issue could be with the AC adapter or the motherboard. Most of the time the issue turns out with the AC adapter.

Battery Not Charging

Most of the times this happens because of the AC adapter. So first of swap the AC adaper with the known good AC adapter and check your AC adapter on some known good system.

If adapter is working fine then please do a two-way swap of battery as advised above.