Every now and then, it helps to "reset" things by completely
discharging the battery.

Start the computer. Get to the BIOS screen (however that works
for you).

Let it sit there until it dies.

Do this a couple times.

When my Sharp started giving erroneous batt. life indications similar
to yours, this corrected it for awhile.

I think the writers of the power meter applet make some assumptions
about the battery - one of them is that we won't tolerate one that will
only run for 40 min and they didn't take the discharge curve of an old
battery into consideration (it's different than one for a new battery).


"FranksJacket" <FranksJacket@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3E7C1F0A-AEF7-4292-9450-F13A9A0807B8@microsoft.com...
> I have Toshiba Portege M205-s810 with XP Tablet edition sp2 running on it.
> The computer is several years old and I still use the original battery. I
> bought the computer in 2004. I know that the battery is not what is was and
> its overall life has diminished. I get approximately 0:40 use out of it with
> the Toshiba power saver settings. I am fine with this as I do not want or
> need to shell out $100+ for a new battery.
>
> The problem I am having is that the XP Power Meter is reading incorrectly.
> After a full charge, it reads 100%. 0:06 later it reads 95% and so forth.
> It stays like this for 0:40 (65%) till it suddenly changes to 1% and
> hibernates. Why would it do that and can I fix this?