Laptop battery meter calibration

Evening. Thought I'd give you guys a try with this issue on my Fuji-Siemens T4210.

The battery meter is wrong. I can charge it up to 100% without a problem, but it only takes about 2 hours to run down to 2%, at which point the laptop goes to sleep, citing the low battery as the reason. However if I then wake it up again, it'll run for about an hour before eventually cutting off.

I've tried calibrating it as per various guides on the net without much luck. The most common way seems to be letting it run completely flat until it cuts off, then powering back on with the ac adapter and charging it up to 100%. I have tried this process 3 times now and the situation hasn't changed even a little bit.

Any other tricks for this issue?

TIA!

You should always allow your battery decay to empty if you wish to maximise the life of the battery.
Realistically 2 hours on battery power normal usage is not bad at all if you are getting 3 hours thats excellent.
There is little wrong with your battery calibration its what Fujitsu does to protect your data so you have no lost information.
Batteries are just storage devices that run the laptop when there is no external power being used they generally run the system a lot slower than under power to preserve as much of the battery storage as possible by doing so they can achieve 2-4 hours running on battery power. If you are looking for more battery time then you should look at some of the net books that are available whereby some 5-6 hours can be achieved on the battery power albeit with a adapted operating system..

Today's laptops use Lithium batteries instead of nickel, but there's a lot of incorrect information out there about how to charge or drain your batteries, so let's set the record straight: Nickel batteries required being fully drained before a recharge to optimize your battery life, but Lithium batteries are the opposite—you do not need to fully discharge it before recharging, and in fact, if you fully deplete a lithium battery and don't recharge for a while, it can become incapable of holding a charge.

Here

You should always allow your battery decay to empty if you wish to maximise the life of the battery.

That is very bad advice and will drastically reduce battery life.

In reply to a post by pcologist:

You should always allow your battery decay to empty if you wish to maximise the life of the battery.
Realistically 2 hours on battery power normal usage is not bad at all if you are getting 3 hours thats excellent.
There is little wrong with your battery calibration its what Fujitsu does to protect your data so you have no lost information.
Batteries are just storage devices that run the laptop when there is no external power being used they generally run the system a lot slower than under power to preserve as much of the battery storage as possible by doing so they can achieve 2-4 hours running on battery power. If you are looking for more battery time then you should look at some of the net books that are available whereby some 5-6 hours can be achieved on the battery power albeit with a adapted operating system..

Like others have mentioned, this advice is very abstract. First of all Li-ion batteries should not be drained completely (infact neither should some of the legacy types be completely). Secondly, it's not normal to switch off a laptop if it has another hour worth of battery, 20 mins would be more permissible on a worn out battery. 1 hour is 33% capacity that it's not letting you have!

To the OP, how are you completely discharging the battery? I presume you are already doing a procedure similiar to below, but just for clarification:

Boot into safe mode and select high power/AC power plan
Allow laptop to switch off through insifficnet charge (rather than an ACPI shutdown)
Plug charger in and charging till completely full (keep an eye on this of course, usual disclaimer)
Once battery is at 100%, then see if any difference is made.

If not, it may be safe to assume that the chip on the battery used to calculate the charge, or the battery itsself, is simply defective and needs replacing.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by pcologist:

You should always allow your battery decay to empty if you wish to maximise the life of the battery.
Realistically 2 hours on battery power normal usage is not bad at all if you are getting 3 hours thats excellent.
There is little wrong with your battery calibration its what Fujitsu does to protect your data so you have no lost information.
Batteries are just storage devices that run the laptop when there is no external power being used they generally run the system a lot slower than under power to preserve as much of the battery storage as possible by doing so they can achieve 2-4 hours running on battery power. If you are looking for more battery time then you should look at some of the net books that are available whereby some 5-6 hours can be achieved on the battery power albeit with a adapted operating system..

Like others have mentioned, this advice is very abstract. First of all Li-ion batteries should not be drained completely (infact neither should some of the legacy types be completely). Secondly, it's not normal to switch off a laptop if it has another hour worth of battery, 20 mins would be more permissible on a worn out battery. 1 hour is 33% capacity that it's not letting you have!

To the OP, how are you completely discharging the battery? I presume you are already doing a procedure similiar to below, but just for clarification:

Boot into safe mode and select high power/AC power plan
Allow laptop to switch off through insifficnet charge (rather than an ACPI shutdown)
Plug charger in and charging till completely full (keep an eye on this of course, usual disclaimer)
Once battery is at 100%, then see if any difference is made.

If not, it may be safe to assume that the chip on the battery used to calculate the charge, or the battery itsself, is simply defective and needs replacing.

Exactly right, and that's pretty much the procedure I've attempted, 4 times now. It's not the life of the battery I have a problem with - 3 hours from a 5 yr old battery is fantastic, it's just the meter that's defective. It goes in to stand by after 2 hours-ish of use. I can then power back up and continue on, but the safe-standby feature doesn't return this time round, so I have to use the last hour with the meter showing 2% and anticipating the now-i'm-totally-out-of-power cut off.

As you say it's probably the battery. I can work around it for now by just not having anything important going on during that last hour gasp.

Thanks for the replies guys

Might be worth just as a last resort checking if there are any BIOS updates, or utilities on the manufacturers website for your laptop, or indeed any settings in BIOS.