If you are suddenly faced with the fact that your laptop does not want to charge, do not rush to throw him against the wall. This happens even if the manufacturer is cool, and die laptop time has not yet approached.
If your laptop is not very young, then you begin to think that the battery is a consumable thing, and perhaps the capacity has decreased over time. No, it isn’t and you might not have to deal with replacements at all, so let’s talk about how you can try to fix this problem without a trip to the technicians. There are also cases where the battery cannot be repaired because it has used up all its potential, then you only have to replace the battery.
The battery capacity is the basic, initial capacity that is specified by the battery manufacturer. As you use the battery, its actual capacity will decrease (the calculated capacity will always be equal to this value).
How to find out if your laptop battery is running low
The latest versions of Windows 10 and 11 have a special utility called PowerShell. Here you can get a report on the battery status. Perform the following sequence of actions:
- Go to the Start menu and select the version with “administrator” rights
- In the utility window that appears on the screen, enter (copy) the following command: powercfg /batteryreport
- The report will be generated in a folder, and the path to it will be displayed on the screen.
- Highlight the path to the file and copy it to the search bar of the explorer (or any open folder).
- Windows will prompt you to choose a program to open the file with. Choose any browser. A report of the following type will appear in the window
At the bottom of the report, you can see the state of your battery, its initial capacity and actual capacity (it decreases over time as it degrades).
It is worth emphasizing here that if you have just installed Windows 10-11, it is better to wait for several full discharge cycles (3-5) to get the most informative report. In our example, the number of discharge cycles is not displayed for this reason.
Through the command line
A report similar to the one described above can be obtained from the PowerShell utility in another way – using the command line. To do this, in the Start menu, in the search box, type cmd (or press Win + R).
In the window that appears, type: powercfg /batteryreport
Once the report is generated, the operating system will show you the folder where it is saved. However, if you accidentally miss this message, you can find it through the same command line. To do this, press Win+R and enter the path to the file, which will look like this: C:\WINDOWS\system32\energy-report.html.
Here’s what you can learn from the report file by section:
- Recent Usage – shows when your laptop was turned on and when it was turned off in the last 10 days;
- Battery Capacity/Usage History – shows the chronology of changes in the actual battery capacity relative to the initial indicators;
- Battery life estimates – calculates the approximate time the laptop can be used without recharging the battery. The data here is more accurate than the one provided by the utility in the system tray.
How to diagnostic laptop battery
Windows has a built-in battery diagnostic utility. To activate it, first type “command prompt” in a system search, right-click on the utility you found, and run it as an administrator. In the window that appears, type powercfg /batteryreport and press Enter.
After a few seconds, Windows will save the battery report to a folder in C:Windowssystem32. Locate the file named battery-report.html and open it with any web browser. Then scroll down to the Installed Batteries section – you should see Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity.
If you don’t see the information you want in the report, you can look it up with free third-party programs like BatteryInfoView and BatteryCare. The first one displays Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity right from the Start menu, and the second one simply clicks on Detailed Information.
How to check your MacBook battery
One of the easiest ways to check the battery status of your MacBook is with the free utility coconutBattery. It displays all the data you need to check, including design capacity and full charge capacity, as soon as you launch it. And it can show you the same information for iOS devices connected to your computer.
If you don’t like coconutBattery for some reason, try one of the alternative programs.
