Gateway Laptop won't charge unless in power saving mode???

[cabech984]

Hey guys, my brother had a Gateway MD2514u laptop that he recently sold to a family member. It has a problem where the laptop will not charge unless its in the "power saving mode" power plan. Does anybody have any ideas as to what can cause this?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[bluemac]

Very unusual, I've never experienced this. Which OS are you running?

I'm not sure why it should make a difference, but it might be worth putting the battery through a 'calibration' cycle. You may find a feature built into the BIOS which can do this for you. Essentially, it just charges the battery up to full, and drains it down to 0%. I'd put it through a few of these. If you haven't got the feature built in, try just booting it to BIOS and letting it charge up naturally - then unplug the power and let it drain. It won't employ any battery saving tactics in the BIOS, whereas Windows will intervene and hibernate/sleep the system at 5% or 10%.