Forum Discussion

pinkywoo's avatar
pinkywoo
Dialled in
9 months ago

Battery icon gone

Can anyone help please? I'm not very good but have googled about this.

I noticed the battery icon in the task bar on my laptop has disappeared, so I can't tell whether to plug in or not. In the settings, it showed as 100% despite having used the laptop for 20 minutes, another time it was stuck on 52%. Now I can't find that.

In the settings, I then found a toggle on/off button to put the battery on or off the task bar, but it is greyed out so doesn't work. I googled and found a couple of things (can't remember what they were called) to switch on and off. That didn't work. I found a code to put in to Windows Powershell (to get a battery health report) but it said I don't have the authority to do that (the laptop was my son's.) I've restarted the laptop, checked for updates on Windows and drivers. Just done a troubleshoot to find and fix power and battery problems. All it found was that the time it took for the display to close when not in use was too long. That's been fixed.No real mention of the battery. It must still be there because my laptop does work without being plugged in.

  • carl_pearce's avatar
    carl_pearce
    8 months ago

    If you uninstall, on reboot they should automatically re-install.

    • pinkywoo's avatar
      pinkywoo
      Dialled in
      9 months ago

      Thank you for that Client62. I have tried those things but they didn't work.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    9 months ago

    Is your laptop using any specific utility programs provided by the laptop manufacturer to manage hardware and/or power configurations?

    Sometimes these manufacturer 'helper' programs can take over the default Windows settings and prevent them from running or being changed.

  • pinkywoo's avatar
    pinkywoo
    Dialled in
    9 months ago

    Thank you for replying. I have no idea. I think my laptop is getting a bit old now. I have had it for nearly 2 years, my granddaughter used it for uni, and my son had it before that. The battery icon disappeared about 6 months ago for the first time. I found out how to refresh the taskbar and it came back, then disappeared again last week. Refreshing the taskbar didn't work this time.

    • goslow's avatar
      goslow
      Alessandro Volta
      9 months ago

      You will have to do further investigating to find out how/if your laptop power management is being controlled.

      If your laptop is using any manufacturer utility programs, these are often found in a folder on the Windows start button in the manufacturer's name (HP, Dell etc.)

      If you have inherited the laptop, you may well be seeing controls greyed out, and being told you don't have permission to make changes, if you are not an administrative user on the device. You can check that (on a Windows 10 device) by right clicking on the Windows start button and choosing 'Settings' from the popup window that appears.

      From the Settings page choose 'Accounts' and select 'Your info' from the panel on the LHS. It should show you your account name under the large account icon and then say 'Standard' or 'Administrator'. If you are a standard user, you will be restricted on certain things you can change. You would need to use an administrator account on the laptop to change your account from standard to administrator.

  • pinkywoo's avatar
    pinkywoo
    Dialled in
    9 months ago

    Thank you Goslow. I managed to find the folder and it has my name as administrator but my granddaughter's email address. Would I need her to sign in and delete her account? I have been using the laptop for 2 years and the battery icon controller has only been greyed out very recently. Could it have been greyed out during an update? I also found Acer Power Management (My laptop is an Acer). It says Battery Level 0% Plugged In. It still says the same an hour later, but when I unplug the laptop, I can use it for 20-30 minutes before I plug it in again. I don't leave it any longer in case it shuts down.

    • goslow's avatar
      goslow
      Alessandro Volta
      9 months ago

      If you are an administrator you should be able to make any necessary changes.

      How old is the laptop and is the battery original to the laptop?

      Try running a battery report (assuming Acer Power Management does not stop you from doing this)

      https://www.windowscentral.com/generate-battery-report-windows-10

      The first two numbered parts of the instructions are not very clear so elaborating a bit on those ...

      1. Right click on the Windows Start button (bottom LHS of the screen) and choose 'Search'

      2. In the search box type 'cmd' (without the quotes). In the popup that appears for command prompt choose the option to 'Run as administrator' (on the RHS of the popup window). If you are prompted, choose Yes to make changes to the device. Carry on with the rest of the instructions


      Read the article on how to analyse the report. Look at the sections on 'design capacity' compared to 'full charge capacity' to see how much capacity your battery has compared to its design capacity.

      Also at the very end of the report it should give you an expected current run time for the battery based on its past run times.

      • pinkywoo's avatar
        pinkywoo
        Dialled in
        9 months ago

        I have found a few documents my son and granddaughter saved on the laptop from 2014 so probably a little older than that. As far as I know it is the original battery.

        I've managed to open COMMAND PROMPT but all it says is

        Microsoft Windows (Version 10.0.19045.4412)

        C:\Users\Andrew>

        (My son let Andrew borrow the laptop for a short time although I can't find any documents he's saved. I think he only used it for job searching.)

        Right clicking only brings up the choice of Mark, Paste, Select All, Scroll, Find. It has Copy greyed out. I've tried typing Run as Administrator but it says that is not recognised as an internalor external command.

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    9 months ago

    Well if you got 2 hours out of the battery that is pretty good so it must be charging even if there is no obvious display of that happening via the operating system.

    According to the manual the charging light on the front of the laptop should be amber when charging and blue when the battery is charged.

    I am afraid I am out of further ideas to try to help which would result in a quick fix.

    If any of the forum regulars uses an Acer laptop they might be able to suggest some further things you can try. If it charges, holds the charge and runs for 2 hours on the battery we seem to be back to where we started with it being some sort of software/communication issue between the laptop and the battery.

    There are a bunch of further references online for restoring the battery icon in Windows involving things like uninstalling the drivers for the battery etc. but that is not going to be a quick fix on here and you might be thwarted trying those by the Acer Power Management software if that is blocking some native Windows features. You at least now know the battery is working and you can get up to 2 hours of use from it.

    Your best option might be to take it to your local computer shop and let them get hands on with it to confirm the above guess-diagnosis if you feel that way inclined.

    • pinkywoo's avatar
      pinkywoo
      Dialled in
      9 months ago

      I wouldn't mind the icon not being there but have no idea when to plug in and when to unplug. When I got my first laptop, I left it plugged in too much apparently and it stopped working altogether.

      When plugged in but switched off, there is a steady blue light. When plugged in and switched on, there's the steady blue, a steady red, an intermittent blue,steady red. If I then unplug, the first red light goes out. I've not noticed an amber. I'll keep an eye on the lights as it charges.

      I have seen some suggestions online which involve editing the Windows registry. I don't feel I could attempt that. Computer shop it is then. Do I get my degree in computer technology certificate in the post now? Ha ha.

      Thank you so much for all your time and advice. It is greatly appreciated.

      • newapollo's avatar
        newapollo
        Very Insightful Person
        9 months ago
        pinkywoo wrote:

        I have seen some suggestions online which involve editing the Windows registry. I don't feel I could attempt that. Computer shop it is then. Do I get my degree in computer technology certificate in the post now? Ha ha.

        Thank you so much for all your time and advice. It is greatly appreciated.

        Hi pinkywoo 

        You posted an article earlier from /howtogeek.com  - that article includes a link to download 2 files, one of which which will make the necessary changes to your computers registry so you don't need to worry about messing anything up, and the other one will disable the changes.

        "If you don’t feel like diving into the Registry yourself, we’ve created a registry hack you can use. Just download and extract the following ZIP file:  Enable Battery Icon Time Remaining Hack"

        The file you download will be named "EnableBatteryIconTimeRemaining-1" as in the screenshot below - Once you download file that you should double click on it's icon. This will open up a folder which contains two files. You need to double click on the one named "EnableBatteryIconTimeRemaining.reg"  That will open a small window and you wouldd then click on the Run icon.  Then on  the next three screenss click on Yes.  It  will then make the registry changes for you.   You can always undo the changes by clicking on the file named "DiableBatteryIconTimeRemaining.reg" and follow the sameproceduare

  • carl_pearce's avatar
    carl_pearce
    Community elder
    8 months ago

    If you right click the start button, then select 'Device Manager', is there anything listed as batteries?

    • pinkywoo's avatar
      pinkywoo
      Dialled in
      8 months ago

      Thank you Carl. Yes,I found Batteries and underneath it says Microsoft AC adapter and Microsoft ACPI-compliant control method battery.

      • carl_pearce's avatar
        carl_pearce
        Community elder
        8 months ago

        You could maybe try right clicking and 'update driver', or even uninstall, then reboot.

  • pinkywoo's avatar
    pinkywoo
    Dialled in
    8 months ago

    Yaaay, that worked Carl-pearce. Thank you so much. 

    And thanks again to all who spent their time helping me. 

    • carl_pearce's avatar
      carl_pearce
      Community elder
      8 months ago

      Just keep an eye on it the next time you have to reboot, as it may not be permanent!

      Hopefully it's sorted.