Hello Spunky!
The only way I COULD use the laptop was by using household electricity. The battery that is installed, must somehow someway complete a circuit and once it finally decayed to a zero-sum, (just recently- I believe) it no longer allowed a current to pass through itself and died an instantaneous death.
The battery icon would show itself charging up (eventually to 100%) but would be black in color the whole time, which is the opposite of the factory setting, so that might have been a solid clue. Once, when placing the cursor arrow on the battery icon, it showed the battery’s capacity to be at 215%. I’ve never seen that percentage in capacity before so that might of been another clue as to the battery’s imminent demise.
Also if the cord became unplugged from the laptop (accidentally or intentionally) it would immediately shut off and I would then have to plug the cord back in and reboot the system to get it functioning.
It’s all good as I had a backup laptop that turned out to be fully functional even though I thought it too had a bad battery, which is why I had left it stored out of the way in my truck.
Laptop Primary - Battey issue.
Download BatterInfoiew from the below site
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/battery_information_view.html
It is a zip file. Click on BatterInfoView.exe
It will show a pop screen
Check Battery Health %.
There is an article also
https://www.howtogeek.com/172362/how-to-know-when-its-time-to-replace-your-laptops-battery/
When the device is unplugged and running on battery, the icon is black. When you plug it in, it will change to green to indicate it is connected to external power. Your may be a connection issue.
Description Value
Battery Name 42T4799
Manufacture Name SANYO
Serial Number 21996
Manufacture Date
Power State AC Power
Current Capacity (in %) 99.0%
Current Capacity Value 12,270 mWh
Full Charged Capacity 12,400 mWh
Designed Capacity 86,580 mWh
Battery Health 14.3%
Voltage 12,495 millivolts
Charge/Discharge Rate 0 milliwatts
Chemistry Lithium Ion
Low Battery Capacity (1) 200 mWh
Low Battery Capacity (2) 620 mWh
Critical Bias
Number of charge/discharge cycles 0
Battery Temperature
Remaining battery time for the current activity (Estimated)
Full battery time for the current activity (Estimated)
Remaining time for charging the battery (Estimated)
Total time for charging the battery (Estimated)
“The only way I COULD use the laptop was by using household electricity.”
I am totally confused. You say you have/had a laptop with a battery, but you could only use it plugged into electricity. I don’t get that.
I have a laptop that I keep plugged into electricity but I take the battery out of it. The only time I put the battery in is if I am sitting where I can’t get Electricity. I will put the battery in occasionally though and plug into elec. to give it a charge.
If you kept the battery in ALL the TIME along with elec. maybe you fried it. I know there are some types of equipment they tell you to unplug from elec when fully charged.