It’s quite a serious thing when a laptop battery fails; because it can set you back at least a hundred dollars. That’s hardly a worthwhile use of your money, since you can actually recondition the battery and get it back into working order. However, reconditioning a laptop battery depends upon what sort of battery your laptop uses.
If your laptop is using a nickel-cadmium battery pack, it is certainly possible to recondition it, and the same applies if it is using a nickel-metal hydride pack.
On the other hand, if your computer is using a lithium-ion battery, it might not be possible to recondition it. This is not to say that lithium-ion batteries cannot be reconditioned, because they can - it’s just that the reconditioning process is more complicated and uses special equipment, such as a special charger that will bypass the safety protocols of a normal lithium-ion charger.
We won’t go into that into so much detail, as this article is focused upon reconditioning nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride batteries that have failed in a laptop battery pack.
Recalibration is really the simplest and easiest method to regenerate a failed nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride battery. Recalibration usually becomes necessary in these types of batteries if you have often used your laptop while leaving it plugged into the main supply. While this practice is excellent for lithium-ion batteries, it is actually quite detrimental to nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal hydride batteries.
One of the most clear indicators that a laptop battery needs recalibration, if it is one of these two types, is that the display will never show the battery fully charged, no matter how much time you leave it on the charger.
Another possible indication of a battery that needs recalibrating is if it shows that there is a considerable amount of power left, but then the battery fails just a little while after that. Either of these indications shows a highly faulty display that requires recalibration.
The first step is to simply charge your battery to whatever maximum charge it is capable of taking.
Do not worry if this is not one hundred percent, just so long as it is the highest that the battery display will show. Now, run the laptop continuously until the battery fails completely. Do be careful while using the laptop during this period, as an un-calibrated battery that is showing this particular error can allow the computer to fail suddenly, allowing you to lose data.
Once the laptop fails, let it remain off for at least six hours. Now, charge the laptop again until the battery is at full charge.
At this point, your battery should be properly calibrated and you should be getting the right readings.
The battery should also charge completely to one-hundred percent. It will also not show a high charge when it is about to fail. That’s all that it takes to re-calibrate this sort of battery.