Battery having trouble charging (ran battery diagnostic and got "blown fuse?")

[RubyTuesday1989]

Hello everyone!

I've noticed over the last few weeks (maybe the last two or three) that my battery is struggling to charge. At first it was stopping charging at 91% or so, and I'd have to take out the charger and plug it back in in order to get it moving again, but now it's struggling to charge at any power level. Sometimes it won't charge at all, sometimes it will be "plugged in but not charging," etc. When it does charge, it will charge for about 30 seconds, stop charging, and then start again. Also, in the last couple of days, I noticed that instead of signaling that my battery is running low and to plug in my laptop, it just shuts off without warning instead.

I tried doing a BIOS update to see if that would make any difference, and I tried what I can only describe as a "hard reboot" of the battery (I shut down the PC, unplugged the AC adapter, took out the battery, held the power button for 30 seconds, then put the battery back in, plugged the AC adapter back in, and turned it on). No dice with either one.

I ran the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics tool for Windows and ran a battery check alongside an AC Adapter test. Interestingly enough, when I ran both tests side by side, both failed, but when I ran the battery check and the AC Adapter tests by themselves, they both passed. Although I'm wondering if that has something to do with my having done the first test when the battery wasn't charging although plugged in, and the second one when it was charging no problem.  In any event, when the test(s) failed, it mentioned something about a blown fuse and I got error code 0SP76W-88A95H-XD7X7F-C0B603.

I also ran a battery check through cmd (because why not), and I'm seeing that the full charge capacity vs. design capacity is almost half, which is confusing me a bit because that would seem to indicate that the problem is the battery, but I can't really tell. My battery capacity history also seems to indicate a sudden steep decline in full charge capacity around the end of May, early June, which is about when the issues started--I've attached screenshots of both (for the full charge capacity history, I've included the first record of data from when I first got this laptop, and then from April through now, so you can see how the battery capacity was pretty consistent up until the end of May).

If anyone has any thoughts/ideas/solutions, I'm all eyes and ears! I'm fully expecting to need to replace the battery and/or the AC Adapter, so don't be afraid to tell me that's what I'm going to have to do. LOL Thank you very much in advance for any help you can give.

[CherylG · Accepted solution]

The failure code refers to battery failure. Have you tried running the tests outside of Windows? Although with the diminished charge capacity reported also it does appear to be a battery problem.

Immediately after powering on start tapping the Esc key. This will open a menu where F2 System Diagnostics is an option. Tap F2 key and open Component tests.

[RubyTuesday1989]

Hi Cheryl! Thank you so much for responding--I did not try that! I just tried it now for the battery and the AC adapter and while both passed, the battery test results are showing a battery charge capacity of 54%, so that pretty much confirms that the battery's the problem, I think.