[CrunchyFerrett]

Hello out there in TechLand,

I run a small computer repair facility and have noticed an odd series of laptop failures over the last two weeks. I'm looking for some advice, or possibly confirmation that I'm not losing my mind.

Problem: The laptops in question will not successfully load into Windows while the battery is physically connected. The machine will boot, pass the POST, begin the Windows load process and then completely stop responding to input the instant Windows Explorer loads.

Remove the battery and and boot with the A/C adapter, and the system loads and operates normally. Booting the system into safe-mode functions normally, with or without the battery.)

From there, made the assumption that the battery driver was to blame. I manually uninstalled the battery from Device Manager, deleted the driver files (cmbatt.sys, compbatt.sys) and copied fresh files from the OS install media. I even tried pulling known good files from a working system. The moment the battery is detected and drivers loaded, the system locks.

I have successfully duplicated this using two Linux live CD's (Debian and Fedora) as well as an older ERD Commander 2005 cd. As long as the battery drivers don't load, the systems operate.

Thus far, this issue has appeared on two Acer notebooks (an Aspire 3004wLI and an Aspire3002lci), an HP G50-112R, and a Dell Vostro 1500. I can find no common thread, as they have used various Processors, chipsets and battery manufacturers.

The only thing I haven't tried is replacing the batteries themselves, as batteries are expensive and I don't carry them as stock items. (I order them on a per-customer basis.)

Am I losing my mind here? Does anyone have a suggestion?

[bambezonke]

After many wasted days chasing dead ends and trying various suggestions I have finally identified the exact same problem on an Acer 1640.

Without the battery attached the machine boots and runs without an hitch.

Install the battery and the system freezes either before selecting a user or whilst loading a user's settings. CPU usage would be near or at 100% and would never drop down sufficiently to do anything no matter how long the laptop was left on.

I am now uncertain as to whether it is the battery itself at fault or the power management/charging electronics themselves. Buying a new battery seems a very expensive way to find out on a 3 year old laptop.

[salty2980]

I have never ran into this problem but have you tried disabling all power management options in Windows, could it be an incompatability between the power management settings(which are udated all the time) and the battery drivers?

One question always pegs another question...