FranksJacket wrote:

> 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.

From what you report, the battery seems to get closer to the end of its
life cycle :-( :-(

Batteries are the weakest part of portable devices
As the issue is *not* TabletPC related at all, you may visit other NGs
and forums for notebooks.

> 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.

The Windows Power Meter is a thing not too reliable.
It only "guesses" the state and the calculations are rather rough.

1.) For getting reliable results one has to use some other software.
Some manufacturers offer their own tools, I can not say if there might
be something from Toshiba.

For long years for my notebooks and my TabletPC, I have been using a
great freeware tool "MobileMeter" [1]. It has other really useful
features too (f.e. temperature control). I can highly recommend it.
It does no work under Vista, however.

When searching for a replacement to be used on my tc1000 under Vista, I
came across "BattStat" [2]. The description sounds good, but I did not
yet install it.

2.) The sudden dropping of figures shown does not sound too good.
It could be just a problem with the Windows PowerMeter.

But I think that it probably could have to do with the battery itself.
Some batteries hold information in the state in an internal chip and
Windows works with that.
When a battery gets weak (and yours seems to be rather old) the
information held in the chip may get wrong.
With COMPAQ Armada E- and M-series, f.e., this was a "known problem" and
it could be cured by opening the battery and disconnecting the battery's
board. I could help with that in dozens if cases in the HP Notebook
forum, but I can not recommend this!! It needs on detail information in
the battery and it's very dangerous as the battery may explode

> Why would it do that and can I fix this?

You may try it with *calibrating* the battery (V Green of that when he
said "reset").
Some manufacturers offer "calibration" tools.
Check with Toshiba.

Some notebooks' BIOSs contain a calibration feature. I can't say for
Toshiba.

If not finding a tool, you'll have to do it manually in several cycles
of deep unloading and re-loading.
It could be done under Windows with all options for Power Saving and
actions for low power being disabled. But this would mean a shut-down
with a crash. And this might cause serious problems.

Therefore doing without Windows being loaded - as V. Green has
suggested - would be far safer.

Instead of booting into the BIOS you might boot from a DOS boot-diskette
(in case you have a floppy-drive available), a DOS-boot CD, a bootable
USB-stick or Knoppix or BartPE CD.
I used to work with a DOS-diskette and little program in it which cycled
with heavy HDD-access which was power consuming and by this did speed up
the process of a battery drain. If this might be of use for you, I might
look around for the diskette.

All in all I feel that it would be time to get a new battery :-( :-(

HTH
Rainald
***
[1] MobileMeter
download:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconVa...310/mm0310.zip
translated ReadMe:
http://tamaru.homeip.net/~shingo/mob...terreadme1.htm
[2] http://users.rcn.com/tmtalpey/BattStat/