Laptop battery help

[LEDlightman]

I have an old laptop battery (with the laptop) that is about 3 years old. At first it did not give me much life, about 45 min (I know, because it's old). However, I tried running it down all the way with the computer, then shorting out the terminals manually for a brief period (didn't short them out for a long period of time just a few seconds). I did this twice, and yesterday, it ran for two hours, during normal full, hard use. I decided to push my luck and shorted it out for a third time (again just for a few seconds) in hopes of getting even more. However now, it runs at 100% for about 10 seconds, then it dives to 2%, setting off all kinds of alarms on the computer (and putting it into standby). It charges in minutes, like it's full (it took hours before to charge), yet the computer thinks it's empty after only seconds. It's an Li-ion, and I wonder if I tripped the short circuit protection? Is there any way to reset this, and get back the capacity I know it has?

If it is totally damaged, is there a way to open the battery case and replace the Li-ion cells with NiMH cells? Would they work at all, even though they wouldn't have the same capacity? Thanks in advance.

 

[Ray_of_Light]

The problem are not the cells. You blew up the control circuitry built in the battery, and specifically one or both of the MOSFET transistors used to disconnect the batteries in case of overload or overdischarge.

Anthony

 

[jtice]

Goto your laptops company website. They should have a program that you run to condition the battery.

I have a Dell, and had a similar problem. After running the program (which takes MANY hours) it seemed to greatly improve the battery life.

Search your laptops campany websites support pages for battery conditioning program.