HP 4530s laptop works with power cord but won't charge battery

Question

Suddenly, two days ago my HP 4530s laptop stopped to be able to charge its battery. Since I was noting that the whole battery was dying since some weeks ago, I bought a new one.

Either with the old and new battery, this laptop won't charge them anymore, but it works in the following cases:

1. No battery, just power cord.
2. With battery. But if the battery is exhausted, the laptop is shutted down, even when there's no battery, the laptop is capable of receive current and it works as the first case...

Also, there's something even more strange: the original charger is also dead. It neither works in any case! I required a new generic charger and this is how it works...

I'm afraid that there's some kind of planned obsolescence and, since the laptop works if it's plugged, I find everything very confusing.

Do you know if there's some action I can try that may unblock the ability to charge the battery? Or could it be some issue in the laptop's hardware...?

Update

I've discovered something just now.

With the new battery and a the generic charger, when the laptop boots up to BIOS where I can see the battery level during 2-3 seconds, now it shows the icon as plugged in.

So now the problem is that it won't charge the battery, but the laptop knows that it's plugged to the current.

BTW, the charging light is always off and Windows shows that the battery isn't being charged...

Update 2

I've done something to test what's going on... I know it could be dangerous, but it gives us some new hints:

a. If I power on the laptop without battery and I get to Windows this way, and then I plug-in the battery, laptop thinks there's no power cord plugged-in and it starts to drain the battery.

b. If I power on the laptop with battery and with the charger plugged-in, it has the same effect.

c. In either case, the BIOS splash screen shows the "plugged-in" icon.

d. If I extract the battery again in the splash screen, without powering-off the laptop, the laptop shows the so-called "plugged-in" icon.

Solution

Original chargers often implement a protocol to tell the laptop that they support sufficient power (=Watt) to charge the laptop. If the laptop can't tell that it will have enough power it will go into a low power state where it doesn't charge the laptop.

This can happen because:

• The charger can't deliver enough power.
• The charger is broken and can't tell the laptop that it delivers enough power.
• The charger doesn't know how to tell the laptop that it can deliver enough power.
• The laptop part that should listen to the charger is broken.
• A software/driver failure.

Quite often the problem is the charger. Try to borrow an original charger from someone to test it.

Edit: If e.g. the new charger is 90W and the old charger is 120W, the expected behavior is that the battery will not charge, even if both chargers are from HP.

Comments

[Dan]

If the new battery is not charged with a good original charger, then the laptop has an internal fault in the power circuitry. With non-original charger it will warn you at power on and not work properly. Original chargers have a known issue, output cable isolation damaged inside and shorts out, can be repaired by an electronics guy.

[Matías Fidemraizer]

Thanks in advance for this answer. Luckily, my dad has the same laptop, but the worst part is he doesn't live in the same city so I can't test this today, tomorrow or who knows when (weeks). Anyway, I'll check everything together and see what's going on...

[Matías Fidemraizer]

See my update in my question... Does this points you to some other direction?

[gronostaj]

@MatíasFidemraizer Generic charger may fall under Peter's third point (it doesn't communicate with laptop) or the first one (not enough power).

[Matías Fidemraizer]

@gronostaj Yes, you're right... I'm sad I can't test this case... grrr

[Peter]

@MatíasFidemraizer You can check the power by reading the sticker on the old and the new charger. Power can be written in Current(A) or Power (W). Multiplying Current(A) times DC Output Voltage (V) gives Power (W). Output voltage is usually a number between 10V and 30 V. If the new charger delivers less power you know that this is at least one of the problems.

[Matías Fidemraizer]

@Peter Both the genuine and generic chargers are 19V. Genuine one has 90W output power while the generic one has 120W. BTW, it's a generic Chinese charger... I wanted to try out it before buying something expensive.

[Matías Fidemraizer]

Finally I bought another generic charger and it started to charge the battery again!! Incredible!! I was very worried..!

[Matías Fidemraizer]

I believe that I did this already with no luck when I had the issue. BTW the laptop is still in my home, I could give a try and see what happens...