[Mort_Cinder]

hi everyone hope someone can help me out. i had this hp laptop for about 9 months now. the battery used to last about 1 hour or more until a month ago. now suddenly it runs out in like 20 mins . i always had the battery set to "always on" setting to get the max from games. another thing, it always told me when i had "low battery", but now it just goes into hibernation when it runs out without telling me anything. i dont remember having changed anything recently so im wondering whether this is normal behaviour as the battery gets older?

anyway, thanx in advance and dont know if it helps but my gfx card is an ati mobility radeon 9000 igp.

[Duranix]

yeah, i think your battery is dying out.... you might want to replace it.

[yoda133113]

it shouldn't be dieing that fast (for a comparison I get 2:30 while ripping a dvd on my laptop and 5-6 hours when just doing regular office stuff).

What is your processor, and screen size (those are very important to battery life)?

You don't need to put the battery on always on, the only thing that effects is how long before sleep modes, hard drive shut downs, etc, come on when idle, this just wastes battery life when idle.

You also should run the screen as dim as possible when running off of battery, this can jump your battery life 5-20% depending on your comp.

You also probably have a battery relearning, recalibrating, etc. utility somewhere on your computer (probably in your bios, look at your documentation or call HP). Run that it should help your battery life (the issue with the sudden shortness of life is probably just a calibration issue).

Also turn off any unnessecary components when you can (eg. if you are playing a video game offline, turn off the wireless card save some more power)

My old laptop (P4M, mobility Radeon 9000 64 MB 15 inch screen) had much better than 1 hour battery life.

Let me know how things turn out.

[Mort_Cinder]

hey yoda thanx for the reply.

i have an intel p4 2.4Ghz. but when in "laptop/portable" battery setting it runs at 1.6Ghz which is meant to make the battery last longer. just to clarify, i run it in "always on" just when playing games to play them better. as for the screen size its 15 inches.

regarding the recalibrating utility, i dont know if there is any. i had a look and couldnt find anything, maybe i can download one?

thanx for the tips, but maybe i wasnt clear. my problem is why the sudden drop in battery life? cause now it doesnt even last a half hour whatever power setting it is on.

maybe as duranix suggested there is a problem with it.

thanx again for the help

[yoda133113]

The battery shouldn't need replacing after only 9 months though (I had an IBM powerbook pentium 1 100 mhz from 1995 that my mom still uses it's stock battery last considerably longer than 1 hour, and it's 9-10 years old).

I would bet money that problem can be solved with a recalibration, I also doubt there is a utility to download one (I'm not sure I would trust one if there was, unless HP has one). I would also be willing to bet that there is a recalibration utility somewhere (if not in the bios though it is probably buried on HP's support site somewhere) but if that isn't an option then you could fake it (best word I could think of)
Use the battery up ALL the way from full charge (do this in safe mode while using the least amount of power possible if you can it will give a more steady drain and use up more of the battery (due to lower power usage)) then with the computer off (preferably, not really required) charge it up all the way, if you can do this 2 times in a row it would be better, but once should be enough.
This should help, but a recalibration is better, if you truly don't have one at all, then my already low estimate of HP's computers will drop some more. (a recalibration is roughly the same as what I told you to dothough , but it does it better than a rough job like that does).

As far as you getting no warnings anymore, the problem is probably just that with the faulty life reports the computer is getting from the battery, then by the time it reports 5% (or whatever your report settings are) the computer is using up to much power for the battery to support it and kicks out. Good luck and I really hope you don't need a new battery (does HP have a 1 year warranty on batteries, Gateway has one, and I'm just curious, cause that would solve your problem completely).

Rabbit Trail
You might not get much better than 1-2 hours (when the battery starts working again) in heavy load though while gameing, you are probably running screen at highest brightness, you are running one of the most power hungry cpu out there, a large screen, a not very efficient graphics solution, and probably the cd drive often. So that might not increase much, but that is a later discussion, we must get the battery working normally before we can discuss making it last longer under normally operating situations.