State of charge issue - Dell laptop

[harm_less]

I've noticed over the past day or two that the battery charge level is sitting around 20% despite being powered via the step down transformer. Battery symbol indicates that it is connected to the charger. Battery was replaced about a year back so disappointing if it's reached end of life already. Any suggestions?

[king1]

assuming windows, you can run at the command line

powercfg /batteryreport

look for DESIGN CAPACITY and FULL CHARGE CAPACITY - if they're miles apart it's stuffed. Often these are replaced with cheap chinese batteries with only 3 month or 6 month warranties, for this reason

[harm_less]

I've just emailed the battery report through for your perusal. Replacement in Sept 2024 was supplied by my computer repair provider. If it's stuffed is it worth going back to them?

[king1]

that looks fine, and genuine, from what I can see

This bit means the capacity hasn't degraded at all...
DESIGN CAPACITY 96,997 mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY 96,997 mWh

you could try unplugging the charger from the wall for a minute or so - they are reasonably intelligent chargers these days so it would be the equivalent of a reboot...

[nzoomed]

Sometimes the power management drivers get messed up and windows stops charging the battery.
You can remove be battery in device manager and reboot the computer, see if that works.

[king1]

you could also try running it on the battery and see how it behaves, according to the report you should see a good 4-5 hours of run time or so, if it suddenly dies after some time, that would indicate a problem.

and if you haven't already "restart" the laptop, that tends to fix a few bugs - assuming it could be a reporting issue in windows. Restart is required, not shutdown/standby/sleep/closing of lid etc...

[harm_less]

I've done a restart and unplugged the transformer/charger from the wall. SOC declining and showing 20% and now 1hr 30min whereas 24% was ~30 mins. I'll keep an eye on what happens as 5-10% SOC shows.

I upgraded to W11 a few days back and every update or restart drops all my logins so suspicious that the battery issue may also be related to the change to W11. The dropped usernames and logins is really starting to piss me off!

[zqwerty]

To get a genuine restart in Windows 10 you have to disable "Fast Start" not sure if that also applies to Windows 11 since I don't have it.

[Wainuitech]

One possible fix is to remove the battery, with No battery or power press and hold down the power button for a about 30 seconds - this will drain all power from the capacitors, put the battery back and see what happens.

There was a weird one I had a few weeks back, similar but the battery would only charge to about 60%, there was a power setting that had been reduced so the battery wouldn't over charge, a sort of battery protection . Similar to the Dell Battery Manager https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOyRa9yh5lQ

One way to check if its the OS is try Charging Via the BIOS. Dell Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59lucDY61HQ

ALSO - Make sure you are using a genuine Dell Charger -- They have a chip installed that is detected by the computer to make sure its genuine , if its not a genuine Charger its possible it wont charge correctly ( Seen that happen MANY times).

[harm_less]

Let the laptop go right down to ~4% this morning before it was suddenly lights out. Back charging again now, slowly, but again seems to stall at about 24%.

Removing the battery is a workshop level operation so not something I'll be attempting. Dell Inspiron 15 7000. I'll check out the YT links to see if they are of any help.

Any suggestions on preventing the logins and other info getting dropped every time I totally power down. This seems to be a W11 based issue. Typical FU of changing something out that didn't need repairing in the first place. I should have gone with my instincts in avoiding upgrading 

[king1]

I upgraded to W11 a few days back and every update or restart drops all my logins so suspicious that the battery issue may also be related to the change to W11. The dropped usernames and logins is really starting to piss me off!

are you saying the passwords are being removed from the chrome password manager completely - or just that when you restart you're getting signed out of all the websites, but the remembered passwords are still there, when you sign in next.

The latter can be caused by programs like ccleaner or browsers removing cookies when closing down or on shutdown...

[harm_less]

I upgraded to W11 a few days back and every update or restart drops all my logins so suspicious that the battery issue may also be related to the change to W11. The dropped usernames and logins is really starting to piss me off!

are you saying the passwords are being removed from the chrome password manager completely - or just that when you restart you're getting signed out of all the websites, but the remembered passwords are still there, when you sign in next.

The latter can be caused by programs like ccleaner or browsers removing cookies when closing down or on shutdown...

Logged out and in many cases, but not all, I'm having to manually reenter the passwords. I'm running Firefox but between this issue and the battery charge limiting it seems suspiciously like settings have been changed by the W11 install. Is that possible?

[king1]

are you saying the passwords are being removed from the chrome password manager completely - or just that when you restart you're getting signed out of all the websites, but the remembered passwords are still there, when you sign in next.

The latter can be caused by programs like ccleaner or browsers removing cookies when closing down or on shutdown...

Logged out and in many cases, but not all, I'm having to manually reenter the passwords. I'm running Firefox but between this issue and the battery charge limiting it seems suspiciously like settings have been changed by the W11 install. Is that possible?

Doubt it's windows doing it but stranger things have happened...
is the tickbox below selected in FF settings, would explain it... 

[harm_less]

Logged out and in many cases, but not all, I'm having to manually reenter the passwords. I'm running Firefox but between this issue and the battery charge limiting it seems suspiciously like settings have been changed by the W11 install. Is that possible?

Doubt it's windows doing it but stranger things have happened...
is the tickbox below selected in FF settings, would explain it... 

It was ticked and pretty sure I haven't done that purposely recently. Now unticked so hopefully issue resolved. TIA

[king1]

Doubt it's windows doing it but stranger things have happened...
is the tickbox below selected in FF settings, would explain it... 

It was ticked and pretty sure I haven't done that purposely recently. Now unticked so hopefully issue resolved. TIA

it's the sort of thing that could have happened with a firefox update, someone probably thought it was a good idea for privacy reasons, or they didn't want to be sued for leaving you auto signins active, so explicitly force you to disable it, which I would guarantee is recorded in some log file or DB somewhere...

[harm_less]

It was ticked and pretty sure I haven't done that purposely recently. Now unticked so hopefully issue resolved. TIA

it's the sort of thing that could have happened with a firefox update, someone probably thought it was a good idea for privacy reasons, or they didn't want to be sued for leaving you auto signins active, so explicitly force you to disable it, which I would guarantee is recorded in some log file or DB somewhere...

Don't know who you are implying by "someone". It is my own laptop and I'm literally the only person who touches it. The most significant activity done recently was the update to W11, and possibly the periodic FF updates that keep turning up. 

If W11 has fucked with settings like this then the battery management system may be their doing as well. MS has a long history of every second version being a dog and I'm erring towards W11 potentially being one of their barky ones.

[king1]

it's the sort of thing that could have happened with a firefox update, someone probably thought it was a good idea for privacy reasons, or they didn't want to be sued for leaving you auto signins active, so explicitly force you to disable it, which I would guarantee is recorded in some log file or DB somewhere...

Don't know who you are implying by "someone". It is my own laptop and I'm literally the only person who touches it. The most significant activity done recently was the update to W11, and possibly the periodic FF updates that keep turning up. 

If W11 has fucked with settings like this then the battery management system may be their doing as well. MS has a long history of every second version being a dog and I'm erring towards W11 potentially being one of their barky ones.

no I meant someone at Firefox HQ, probably in the legal department