LAPTOP BATTERY CALIBRATION PROCESS AND TESTING

Battery Pack Calibration Process

(Applicable for New / Fresh Battery Pack as well as for Battery pack in which the Actual backup time is much less than expected)

Calibration is the process of fully charging, discharging and then charging. It can take several hours.

1) Make sure that the computer power is turned off

2) Connect the AC adapter to fully charge the battery pack

3) After the battery pack is fully charged(LED indication will change from Red to Green), turn ON the computer

4) When the message "Press F2 /DEL to enter into ---" appears, press F2/DEL (i.e enter CMOS setup)

5) At this state, disconnect the AC adapter and leave the Notebook ON until the battery is fully discharged. (The notebook will shut down automatically, once battery is fully discharged)

6) Without switching ON the notebook, connect the AC adapter and allow the battery pack for 12 hour continuous charging.

Note: The above calibration process is recommended for 3 cycles generally during the first time usage only. But our lab experience shows when the battery shows a poor backup time, usually it catches up to the specs when we do the cycling for 3 times.

Measuring Battery Back Up Time

Measuring, Reporting and discussing about Battery Back time should be done in a standard

method. Battery Mon is one of the standard tests for measuring the battery back up time.

Following settings MUST be done before Starting the Test

1. Under Display properties screen saver is set to None.

2. Under Power Option Portable/Laptop is chosen as Power Scheme.

3. Under Power Scheme following setting are done :

a. Turn off Hard Disks   ---   None

b. Turn off Monitor        ---   None

c. System Standby         ---   None

d. System Hibernate      ---   None

4. Under Alarms tab uncheck both The Low battery Alarm & Critical battery alarm.

5. Under Advanced tab following Power button setting are done:

a. When I close the lid of my portable computer         ---    Do Nothing.

b. When I pres the power button on my computer       ---    Do Nothing.

c. When I press the sleep button on my computer       ---    Do Nothing.

6. Under Hibernate tab Un check Enable Hibernation option.

7. System Volume is made MUTE.

8. Disable the Wireless LAN Card .

9. Brightness of the LCD Panel is set to the minimum brightness level.

10. All the Start Up programmes, including the Automatic Updates should be Disabled.