Battery problem maybe

[Ghost]

Hey all, was hoping someone might be able to help me with a problem I"m having with a Gateway MA2 laptop I'm working on. When its starts to boot up it goes almost to logging on then shuts off, I try again and it barely stays on. It is plugged in when it does this. I checked the battery status and its flashing on the lowest bar and I have left it to charge but this doesn't change. My question is does this laptop require a battery that is capable off charging in order to run even when its plugged in? One other thing its showing a pink light when its on but off and plugged in.

[Ghost]

Just thought I give an update, I was in contact with Gateway's support and because I'm using a generic cable they think thats the problem. It seems the laptop is only running on battery power and when I take the battery out and try to use the cord it won't turn on at all. Gateway support told me it should come on with only the cable and no battery. So waiting for a cable now but seems odd that a generic one would be fine for a couple of months then suddenly stop working all together. BTW pink light means charging for this laptop but obviously isn't doing that or anything for that matter. Here's hoping its the cable.

[Ghost]

Well it turns out that it had nothing to do with the generic cable cause I got a Gateway one and same thing. So I'm out of idea's, I'm guessing its power supply/mobo issue.

[Carskick]

It sounds heat related in that it tries to boot, shuts off, then won't boot for a while, but overheating in such a short period of time?

Could a bad battery be the culprit.

[Ghost]

No, it doesn't even boot when the batteries not in it. Certainly a power cord connections issue. When its off and pluged in it tries to charge but you see the charge light blink off and on during this. I let it charge for basically a day and half and it got to 60%. I was able to get the important stuff of it for her but we are now checking out her warrantty info.

[Chandler]

Not sure this is going to be of any help here, but it's interesting.

I recently discovered that the latest version of Lavalys Everest can give an estimate of the wear level of a laptop's battery by comparing the original capacity of the battery with the current capacity (not sure how this is done - I presume the ACPI spec allows some kind of monitoring).

My laptop's wear level is indicated to be 59% (i.e. 41% capacity of when it was new) and this seems about right when converted into time.  I now get around 40 minutes of battery life whereas it would get around 90 minutes when new.

I then checked my mum's older laptop and the wear level was 96%!  Again, it seems about right - as evidenced by the 2 minutes battery life ;)