My Battery Problem

I have an Acer Aspire One 532h and having a problem recently. When I charge, it does not meet its top charging which is 100% but it just reaches up until 40-55% (which leaves me 2 hours of use) then after a while the battery meter would say "plugged in, not charging". But when I reach 6% with WiFi and Bluetooth on, which gives me a warning message that the machine will hibernate automatically within 32 minutes, my machine still stays running which last up to 1-2 hours of use. I thought this was a minor issue so I reformatted but the problem was not solved. I installed a battery meter program to have more information about my battery and it gave me this result:

BatteryBar v3.4.3 at 15 %, A/C disconnected, WiFi (turned off), Bluetooth (turned off)

Percent: 15%
Capacity: 7,117 mWh of 47,380 mWh
Discharge Rate: -6,286 mW
Battery: 0:39 (Discharging)
Full Lifetime: 6:05
A/C: Disconnected
Battery Wear: 0.3% of 47,520 mWh

Will be posting more result and screenshot upon request because I don't know where to start. Thanks in advance. Any help is appreciated.

 

Try shutting the machine down, remove the battery and A/C lead. Leave it all disconnected for about 2-5 minutes. Plug the battery back in but don't turn the machine back on. Plug in the charge lead and leave it for an hour or two and see if the charge light goes green.

You may also want to try and update the BIOS to the latest version.

 

Thanks for the suggestion and fast response.

When I charged my battery, the light indicator has two colors

Orange: Charging
and
Blue: Full charged.

I followed your advise but when I charged it, it gave me an orange light, then after two/three hours, the indicator just turned off (no light indications) which means it stopped charging again. And when I turned on the machine, the battery icon tells me that its plugged in, not charging again.

I would like to attempt to update my BIOS but I think I must report first the result. Moreover, I don't know how to update my BIOS. (lol)

 

I had a similar issue recently, which is why I've replaced my battery. The charge light would just sit there flashing, otherwise Windows was saying I needed to replace it. I'd updated my BIOS all the way, but it turned out to be the battery at fault.

Updating the BIOS is pretty easy.

This link will download the BIOS (version 1.25) direct from Acer Australia's website.
Open the ZIP file once downloaded and run the application inside it. Note: you must have the A/C lead plugged in while updating the BIOS.
Follow the prompts and wait a few minutes and your BIOS will be reflashed from within Windows, you'll then have to reboot the computer.

 

Thanks for teaching me how to update my BIOS. However, It does not solved my problem and I still experienced the "plugged in, not charging." I think my battery is really defective. Though, I'm still wondering how can I stay up to 2 hours with critical battery power reserved. Are Acer products specifically, AO532h, have warranty on the batteries, so I can replace them?

 

If you're running Windows 7 on your AAO, chances are you might be getting faulty reports from Win7 about the battery. Its a known issue that as far as I'm aware, Microsoft has yet to resolve. In the mean time, you could probably get away with disabling the battery in device manager which will stop Windows from reporting it's status and therefor disable any automatic standby / hibernation. I had to do this with my D250 until Acer released a BIOS update to resolve the issue.

Having said that, I don't believe that your battery is defective just yet. I don't know for sure what sensors or hardware drivers BatteryBar uses to report the battery's health, but if it's only saying you have 0.3% battery wear then I'd be inclined to believe it, especially considering that you can get a further 2 hours out of your battery after the "critical" notification.