Kohjinsha SC3 battery not charging

[Jenn]

Anyone having trouble with their SC3 battery charging?

Two times so far, I've had to shut down the unit (I usually just keep it sleeping), remove the battery, and reboot in order for the battery to charge. Otherwise, when I have the device plugged in, the battery meter just says "plugged in, not charging."

This first happened a week ago shortly after I connected it to the Tekkeon MP3450 power station. I did it only to see if I had an adapter that would fit, so it was only connected for about a minute. I haven't used the MP3450 since, but I ran into the same "plugged in, not charging" problem last night.

Any ideas?

[ElCamino]

Hopefully this isn't a problem with the rest of the SC3. Jenn I have seen this with my Macbook Pro running Vista Ultimate. When I boot up to Vista I can have the charger plugged in but it will not show its charging. You might of already tried this. I just remove the charger wait 3 secs then plug it back in and starts to charge and shows charging.

[darksci]

OMG, exactly same problem I had 3 days ago.

Came to work, put in the charger and then blam, stopped charging at 66%.

I thought the battery was dying already! Then I thought about whether it was the adaptor.
So used it till 50%. Then recharged, and yet again 66%.

Turns out I had to recalibrate the battery by letting it recharge when its turned off.
Then whatever power management issue on Vista seemed to have fixed, so it recharges back to 100% now.

[SeniorDad]

I found that I have the battery not charging problem when I deplete the battery past 12% charge.

I solve it by hooking the device up to external power, removing the battery, waiting a few seconds, then reinstalling the battery.

[Jenn]

I'm glad I don't just have a defective unit, but the issue really shouldn't be this common either. I'm clueless about how things works so maybe this isn't even possible, but is there a way to update/fix the charging unit without cracking open the SC3 and physically replacing it? I assume it has nothing to do with a firmware or driver update, but is there something similar to that that could fix it?

[Zealot]

Charging behavior is part of the BIOS, usually...perhaps there is an updated BIOS? Most vendors release BIOS updates periodically.

Z

[chippy]

Same problem with mine Jenn ans well as problems coming out of standbyn and clicking hard drive.

Plus mine has stopped booting into Vista. (Black screen)

There seem to be quite a few reports about failures.

MAybe we should get together and report direct to Kohjinsha/Inventec.
I'll keep an eye out for Inventec engineers next week at IDF.

Steve.

[fargox]

well, i don't think this is a sc3 issue. i have seen this on my shift, my old macbook with bootcamp and on my asus v1 notebook also. all of them are/were running vista. i think it seems to be a vista issue. try search google for "plugged in, not charging". there are many users experiencing this issue. i my case plugging the ac power out and in again solved the problem in most cases. sometimes i needed a reboot.

[Jenn]

Is it possible that the batteries themselves could be to blame? Or are all battery charging issues BIOS/OS/software related?

[ElCamino]

Is anybody still having the battery not charging problem? I got my SC3 on Friday and today noticed that its not charging stays at 87%.

[Jenn]

I haven't had it for a while, ElCamino. When it does happen, though, physically removing and reinserting the battery fixes it. Are you getting the "plugged in, not charging" message in the battery meter too?

Now whenever I plug in the SC3, I wait to see if the battery LED lights up before I walk away to make sure it's really charging.

[vidoc]

Originally Posted by ElCamino

Is anybody still having the battery not charging problem? I got my SC3 on Friday and today noticed that its not charging stays at 87%.

I have this problem also.

My SC3 is only 3 weeks old (purchased in Japan) and the problem of plugged-in, not charging has appeared after I installed enlish Vista Enterprise and SP1.

The remedy is to remove battery for a few minutes and reboot.

[ElCamino]

What I did was push the rest button on the bottom of the SC3 and rebooted and started to charge. Jenn, has it happen again after that one time?

[Jenn]

Originally Posted by ElCamino

Jenn, has it happen again after that one time?

It actually just happened again today! I removed the battery, stuck it back in immediately, and it started charging. Since I've had the SC3 (about 5 weeks or so now, I think), this battery issue has happened about 4 or 5 times.

I can't pinpoint the cause, as it's happened while the unit was off, sleeping, and running. :confused:

[Sangdrax]

I bought a Kohjinsha at the end of July, in Japan. Today I wanted to boot it without plug, and I saw that it was not charged.

When I plugged it the OpenSUSE Linux:

"plugged, 0%Charge"

(but not charging).

I shutdown, take out the battery, wait a few seconds, plug again, and it charges. It doesn't depend on the OS installed on the system.