Sunday, June 28, 2009

Plugged In But Not Charging

Two months back my laptop's battery went dead. Two weeks back my laptop's charger went dead. Since my bank account is already dead (empty) I figured it's impossible to buy a new laptop (unless BestBuy is giving them away for free) so I decided to buy new battery and charger.

My first step was to go on BestBuy's website and see what they expect me to pay for the "accessories". Turns out a good battery is not less than $120 and charger is no cheaper either. I could've added couple hundred dollars more and have bought myself a new laptop if I was that naive.

Lucky for me I know about this little website Ebay (www.ebay.com - you have to be living under a rock to not know that web address). I searched for battery and charger on Ebay and got everything for mere $65.00.

I recieved everything by last night. I plugged in everything and put my laptop on charge. After two hours I decided to check up on the system and found out battery was still at 0% charged. When I moved my cursor over the charge icon it said, 'plugged in, not charging'. I almost freaked out because I thought there's something wrong with the battery. But before I write email to the seller, I decided to search online to see if there's a solution available.

Turns out I had to update laptop's BIOS. So I went on HP's website, since that's the maker of my laptop, and searched for drivers and software to download. You need to know what's your machine's number to get the exact version of BIOS. You can do it by going on Start/Help and Support/System Information.

After necessary updates I restarted the PC and now it's running perfectly.

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