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I have a laptop that sometimes shuts down unexpectedly. It's a six year old laptop, bought second hand, that came with a new battery, but not from the laptop manufacturer. I installed Fedora Linux on it.

I've noticed that about every other week the laptop battery starts blinking orange and white after startup. That is normally a sign that I should shutdown, remove the battery and insert it again, reboot and all is good. This is with the power cable connected!

A while ago I installed Windows 10 Pro, which came with the laptop, along with Linux as dual boot.

Linux now runs without much issues, but working with Windows there's no day without sudden reboots. The screen goes black, and when I press the power button to boot, all apps are where I left them, so my guess is that the machine went to sleep.

  • Can I see what has happened and why?
  • If there was a glitch with the battery, making Windows decide to go to sleep, I would like to disable that option.

Update:

The problem is battery related. I can see reports in the Events that the battery is low, while at the same time the laptop is connected to network power. So there should be no power issue, as there is net power. However, this is what happens.

The battery is relatively new, but not from Dell (no brand name on it), so it could very well be that the connector is bad. When I remove the battery, all problems are gone and the laptop keeps running all day.

I think it's stupid that Windows doesn't recognise that there is net power, and still decides to go to sleep. I'm probably going to remove the cells and connector from this battery, then put the battery case back because of the rubber foot.

Solution

I bought a new official Dell battery. Since then the problem the laptop works and doesn't go to sleep when using Windows.

I would still like to see how you can stop Windows from letting the laptop go to sleep when it thinks the battery is low (with the risk of losing data when the battery really is low).

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    Look for power-related messages in the Event Viewer.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jan 16, 2021 at 19:21
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    Also use TurnedOnTimesView to see why the computer entered sleep.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jan 17, 2021 at 13:57
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    Do a complete memory check with memtest(!). The long one (hours). A different OS may require memory write (or read) operations that another rarely does. If the first battery already was gone long ago, now some other hardware parts may be arrived to their end of life. (Note it happend to me with an old laptop). Abrupt shut down with no previous advises, seems to be a hardware problem. Sudden shutdown without warning, appears to be a hardware problem. The fact that it's so bad that it can't be handled by either OS reinforces the idea. Check the various logs (dmesg ...) under both OSes.
    – Hastur
    Commented Jan 18, 2021 at 13:24
  • @SPRBRN: If you have more information on the problem, as requested above, please Edit your post and add it in.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jan 19, 2021 at 8:16

1 Answer 1

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I suspect the orange/white battery LED blinking could be an indication the laptop thinks the battery no longer has much capacity, aka is going bad. If you could provide the laptop brand & model as we could look that up to confirm. Otherwise it could be indicating the battery is not connected which you should be able to tell by a taskbar/system-tray icon that indicates if AC is connected/charging & how much battery time is left. If the battery isn't seen by the PC sometimes either the battery is faulty/dying or the connector on the laptop may be bad, unlikely.

1)As for WHY the Windows reboot/screen-blanks: do what @harrymc advises in a comment as that is likely the easiest way: TurnedOnTimesView app or Event Viewer, Windows Logs, System. Here are some powercfg commands that might help figure out the shut offs & funky battery:

  • powercfg /energy Analyzes the system for common energy-efficiency and battery life problems.
  • powercfg /batteryreport Generates a report of battery usage.
  • powercfg /systemsleepdiagnostics Generates a diagnostic report of system sleep transitions.
  • powercfg /sleepstudy Generates a diagnostic system power transition report.
  • powercfg /systempowerreport Generates a diagnostic system power transition report.'

1a)I'm curious if battery in system tray says anything abnormal when you hover and/or click on it WHILE battery LED flashing orange/white:

System tray battery chargingsystem tray battery

2)As for stopping Windows acting on a (I believe) low battery: go to Power Options (in Control Panel), Change when the computer sleeps, under 'On battery' section change 'Put the computer to sleep' to Never. Clicking Change advanced power settings, expand Sleep, verify 'Sleep after' & 'Hibernate after' is set to Never under the 'On battery':

Advanced power settings

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6
  • The problem is battery related. I can see reports in the Events that the battery is low, while at the same time the laptop is connected to network power. So there should be no power issue, as there is net power. However, this is what happens. The battery is relatively new, but not from Dell (no brand name on it), so it could very well be that the connector is bad. When I remove the battery, all problems are gone and the laptop keeps running all day. I think it's stupid that Windows doesn't recognise that there is net power, and still decides to go to sleep.
    – SPRBRN
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 13:05
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    I agree if power cord is connected it shouldn't be do anything erratic if it thinks battery is low or bad. The fact it works fine w/o battery seems to indicate thats possibly the problem. Do you have the old one you could try to isolate if it stops doing this? If so I suspect its a bad/crappy new battery. I'd also check your power cord has a pin inside it which communicates the wattage on most Dell's, w/o it the PC could think it doesn't have enough power to run. Dell Latitude BIOS has an area where it'll show AC adapter wattage & battery charge levels
    – gregg
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 15:11
  • Have you run the diagnostics on the battery? Latitudes have a diagnostic built-in when you hit F12 on boot & select Diagnostics. Otherwise Dell has bootable CD image you can burn & test with. My preferred tool Ultimate Boot CD might also have battery diagnostics, not sure though
    – gregg
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 15:12
  • I just did another diagnostic test, and all was good. I did see a glitch however, but that was not during testing. The voltage levels were 0 at some point, and I saw the battery led blinking orange and white. After that I restarted Windows and saw a new alert: Your battery is very low. Plug in your PC now... It was plugged in!
    – SPRBRN
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 15:32
  • Maybe the tiny pin INSIDE the AC adapter (power cord) plug is broken so not telling the PC what wattage it is & not charging or slow charging the battery. Maybe there is a short in the AC adapter. If your BIOS has a battery section go there to see if it 'senses' the wattage type & shake cord around to see if it suddenly switches to battery dell.com/support/kbdoc/sk-sk/000125337/… hackaday.com/2014/03/03/…
    – gregg
    Commented Jan 28, 2021 at 16:34

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