If the battery charge is displayed incorrectly, calibrating the laptop battery will help you. Over time, the original battery capacity of your device is lost and the full charge may be displayed incorrectly (5% charge is displayed, although the real charge is 20-30%). Please note that physical wear cannot be eliminated, but controller reading errors and software errors will be eliminated.
How often should the battery be calibrated?
Some manufacturers recommend calibration every two to three months. This helps you read the battery more accurately.
In fact, you don't have to worry about such frequent manipulations if you don't care about the most accurate charge indicator. But when your laptop turns off without any warning or you notice a rapid battery drain in the last 10-15%, then it's time to calibrate the battery.
How to manually calibrate a laptop battery
At the moment, there are 2 main calibration methods used: Manual or Software. Both methods work on the same principle - completely discharging and fully charging the battery to restore the charge controller's performance. The only difference is that laptop battery calibration programs can display more information and perform additional software manipulations to obtain the best result. But from personal experience we can say that the differences between these two methods are minimal.
So let's get started. The whole point of calibration is to fully charge and fully discharge the battery. In this case, the charge controller readings will be reset, which will allow you to more accurately determine the charge readings in the future.
To begin, open the settings for your power plan: Control Panel – Power Options
Setting up the power plan
Change advanced settings
Expand Battery Settings and select options as shown in the image.
The main goal of these manipulations is so that when the charge is complete, the device does not go to sleep, but goes into hibernation, which in our case is more convenient. Set the full discharge level to 5% or less, the lower the better. Then set a ban on going to sleep or turning off the display when running on battery power so that the battery discharge process is not interrupted. After completing all the manipulations, you need to set these parameters to default or according to your preference.
Procedure:
- Charge your battery to 100%
- Disconnect the power cord and completely discharge the battery before turning it off (or going into hibernation)
- Connect your device to power and charge it to 100%
Laptop calibration programs
Software calibration is a rather complex process. A large number of battery and laptop models, differences in chipset drivers, ACPI drivers and many other reasons do not allow us to create a universal calibration application. But such applications still exist. Most of them were created by device manufacturers, which is not surprising, because supporting the software component is one of the manufacturer’s responsibilities.
BatteryCare
To check the charge and collect battery statistics, the free application BatteryCare is perfect. It does not have the ability to perform calibration, but the information that is displayed through this software can tell you whether there are any shortcomings in the operation of the laptop and its power supply.
BatteryCare can be downloaded from the developer’s official website. This utility shows the battery charge and the approximate time until the battery is discharged in the tray. The application can monitor the temperature of the processor and hard drive and will notify you if they are overheated.
Another program for calibrating a laptop battery is Smarter Battery (download). This utility is paid, but there is a free promotional period of use. The functionality of this application is richer, unlike the previous utility. Statistics collection, notifications, widgets, capacity, power settings - the main list of application functions. Registration is required in order to perform calibration.
If this software is not suitable for you, try paying attention to programs and advice from laptop manufacturers.
Almost every manufacturer has a utility for calibrating a laptop battery; it is usually included in the pre-installed software package.
In addition, it is possible to perform calibration through the laptop BIOS. There is a topic on the Samsung website that may also apply to other laptops (with Phoenix BIOS)
For other manufacturers (Asus, Acer, Dell and others), either there are no utilities or they are very outdated and are available for a limited number of models.
To maintain the correct operation of your device and its power supply, you should know several rules:
- Always update your drivers: ACPI drivers and chipset drivers are the main components responsible for the power supply circuits and the interaction of the main software and hardware components of your device.
- BIOS/UEFI update. Maintaining current firmware versions has a positive effect on the laptop's power supply.
- Use of different power supply schemes depending on the load. Surfing the Internet and watching movies does not require High Performance Mode, and sometimes this negatively affects the charge performance.
- In cases where the laptop only works on mains power or the battery is completely discharged in 10-15 minutes, you should think about purchasing a new power source or contacting the Service Center to diagnose the hardware component if the new battery does not help.
Let's hope that this article helped you in resolving your issue. If you have any additional questions or difficulties, write comments on this article, we will try to help.
Have a great day!
