Laptop battery doesn't hold charge

[RoamingRita]

This laptop is 5 months old and the battery life is pitiful; always has been. I do a little work on excel and word, internet stuff-banking, occasional shopping, etc. I've searched for battery improvement ideas and have done the obvious things; turn screen brightness down, don't leave the usb tab for the mouse plugged in when I turn off the computer, turn off apps from running in the background. And now, after the computer was off for 5 days while I was away, I couldn't even turn it on. I plugged it in, the amber light was on to show charging, and when I turned it on, the battery life was 0%. It has now been plugged in for an hour and a half and is now at 83%; so I guess the battery is still good and charging.  We'll see how long it lasts. I've always known it loses battery life while turned off, but I find this latest incident of the battery being completely dead after 5 days of being stored unacceptable.

I would appreciate help. Thank you.

[BeemerBiker]

Make sure that when you turn it off it actually turns off and does not just go to sleep.  if it sleeps and is unplugged the battery can run down overnight.  you can define what happens when your close the lid, click shutdown or press the power button

This image shows a laptop that is sleeping and unplugged. The user thought it had been turned off. Note that it discharges until it hits a critical value and then hibernates. About noon it was plugged in and started charging. if it was actually shutoff at about 7pm it would have kept it entire charge.

[RoamingRita]

I appreciate your response Beemer Biker, but I'm very aware of sleep mode. I always click the windows start button, the power button, click shut down, and wait until the system shuts down before closing the computer. I never simply close the lid.

But thank you for this.

[BeemerBiker]

It may not be shutting down.  I had a surface pro that took a long time to shut down and if I closed the lid it slept immediately.  I had to make sure the led on the keyboard went out before closing the lid.

You might look at the battery report for the 5 days you were going and see if the laptop recorded battery usage.  If it was actually shut down there will be no record of usage.

Same for the win11 battery usage report

you run the battery report by bringing up the administrator command window and running

powercfg/batteryreport

as shown below


After entering that explorer line you should see something like the following. You will have to click on it as it is long
http://stateson.net/docs/SP4_battery-report.html
You can use the WindowsKey + shift + S to copy and paste a small image if something is suspicious.
Battery should last about 5 years but less for gaming systems.  With a 5 month old system there is probably no need to do a battery calibration but it might be useful to look at a before and after report  to spot any changes in battery life expectancy.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_2268927-1713329-16

I assume you have a 6 cell and not a 3 cell.

[RoamingRita]

My computer was off.  NO battery usage.  It loses 7-8% per night (each 24 hours).  As mentioned before, I've taken steps people have mentioned to save battery life including disabling "fast startup", which I did awhile ago.  What else is going on, do you know??  Because if its almost fully charged, and I go on vacation again for 2 weeks, it will be dead again. Thanks again.

[BeemerBiker]

If actually off and discharging as fast as indicated that is clearly a hardware problem.

Click here to check warranty
and
Click here for world-wide contact info

[RoamingRita]

Thanks so much Beemer. Very helpful. I'm contacting warranty now.