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?

On 1/15/2009 11:44:00 PM, 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.
>
> 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?
>

I don't have my Toshiba anymore to check, but does the Toshiba power utils
have any kind of a battery reset option? The Lenovos do and I've had this fix
some battery gauge issues on an old X41 I used to have. I just don't recall
offhand if there's anything similar on the Toshiba unit. If it is just a
matter of the windows monitoring being incorrect, what happens when you tell
Windows to NOT suspend or disable when the battery reaches a certain
percentage? Will the unit keep working? Since that would at least determine
if it is simply a matter of Windows misinterpreting the status of the
battery, or the battery just being old enough that it is getting
inconsistent. If it will still run 40 minutes with all of the windows power
settings disabled for suspending or hibernating when battery is low, then it
may be worthwhile to try removing and reinstalling the Toshiba power
application (if they have one) to see if it will make a difference. And if
Toshiba has a battery monitor tray icon of its own, does it show "correct"
while the windows default one shows wrong?


--
John

The Toshiba power utility doesn't have any reset function that I can find.
When the comp hibernates at 1%, the reading is correct. It is before it gets
there that the power meter s reading incorrectly. I have heard of other
batteries that are 4 years old that don't even work for 10 minutes off ac.
Also, when researching this problem, I found several people asking why the
power meter would only get to 46% and not 100% and it was due to their old
batteries. And really that's all I am asking from the power meter.

On 1/16/2009 12:08:12 PM, FranksJacket wrote:
> The Toshiba power utility doesn't have any reset function that I can find.
> When the comp hibernates at 1%, the reading is correct. It is before it
> gets there that the power meter s reading incorrectly. I have heard of
> other batteries that are 4 years old that don't even work for 10 minutes
> off ac. Also, when researching this problem, I found several people asking
> why the power meter would only get to 46% and not 100% and it was due to
> their old batteries. And really that's all I am asking from the power
> meter.
>

Are there any more current drivers that were released for the Toshiba, or
power app updates, that you may not have grabbed? I don't know how much the
OEM software may be standing "in the middle" so to speak of the hardware and
the OS, but may be worth checking into if you haven't already in case there's
an update the improves battery reporting or something.


--
John

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?

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/