Cosmos VII Battery Not Detected

[sidcha]

I ordered this Cosmos VII laptop just about 5 months ago and today when I switched it on, I got a message saying that battery not detected ? I am not sure why ? It is clearly running off the battery as the charger is not even plugged in. I don't recollect any windows update between last night and just now. I have attached a screenshot below with the exact message. I ran the windows troubleshooter for Power but there was nothing detected.

Also, this could be unrelated but I have noticed sparks (sometimes) when I would plug in the laptop charger a couple of times in the socket. But not always. I think this has caused the tips of the adaptor plug to darken in colour ? This does not happen with any other laptop or device that I have...

Any ideas ?






Regards
Sid

 

[ubuysa]

The sparks and arcing on the power plug does not sound good. I would give PCS a phone call on this one.

 

[sidcha]

Thanks. I did speak with them and they are sending me a new battery. But it might also be an issue with the charger. I am attaching pics of the charger plug. The black marks formed on the tips could be due to the sparking. I hope they will replace that for me as well

 

[ubuysa]

Thanks. I did speak with them and they are sending me a new battery. But it might also be an issue with the charger. I am attaching pics of the charger plug. The black marks formed on the tips could be due to the sparking. I hope they will replace that for me as well

View attachment 12455
View attachment 12456
View attachment 12457

Those marks are definitely arcing but that could well be the fault of the socket you're plugging into. Clean that pin up as best as you can and try a different socket. It's not impossible that the arcing there could have damaged the battery (though I think that's unlikely). You generally don't find two separate problems occurring at the same time, so I'd suspect a link between that arcing and your dead battery. You don't want to repeat that with a new battery!

 

[Tony1044]

As ubuysa says, it is unlikely that that arcing caused the battery to fail for a handful of reasons - the first is that the power adaptor is a switched mode power supply, which in essence means that there is no direct connection between the input and output at any high voltage.

Secondly, an arcing plug like that doesn't tend to send voltage spikes.

And finally, even after the low-voltage side of the PSU, there's a fair bit of complex cleaning and charging hardware built into the battery circuit. Back in the say, when all we had was NiCAD and NiMH batteries, along with their memory effect, it was almost as simple as popping a voltage that was slightly higher than the output of the battery across the terminals and they'd charge. You then really just monitored for excessive heat if you had a "complicated" charging circuit.

However, with Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer battery technology the charging circuits are manifestly more complicated and have a whole host of protective measures built in.

As ubuysa says, that arcing is far more likely to be a dodgy 13A socket than anything else.