MSI PR621 - battery not detected by XP

Hi all -

I've done quite a bit of research on this now and everyone else's problems seem to be different from mine.

I have an MSI Pr621 laptop running XP SP3. Ever since I formatted the system from Vista, I have not been able to get the system to detect the battery. When I unplug the AC power, it still says AC power. When I go to the device manager, there is no battery present.

I have run SIW hardware tool and it does indeed show a battery, an NEC ultra plus, but I don't seem to have any drivers that support that. I have reason to believe the battery itself is good, and it does work when AC is unplugged - I just have no indication of the power left! Please let me know if you have any ideas, thank you!

-MSI Guy

 

Maybe windows isn't detecting your computer as a portable computer. I.e. won't have a battery icon in the lower right corner near the clock, won't show a battery, and won't have windows mobility centre.

Just as a long shot try hwinfo32, see if it appears there. And if you pull up a system summary does it show up as an MSI Pr621, as mine is a GT725 and it shows as an MSI GT725?

 

Thanks for the reply.

There is a battery icon in the corner, and I can access its settings. However, no matter what I do it says 'on AC power'. There are four tabs under its settings: "Power schemes", "advanced", "hibernate",and "UPS". None of these have been of any help.

I have used the program SIW which is a hardware detection tool, and my machine indeed does come up as an MSI PR621, and even a battery is detected. Under "Smart battery version" it says "SMART ver 0123", whatever that means .

-MSI Guy

 

Weird man...

Could be a bios or firmware problem not sure.

If anyone else doesn't have any suggestions I'd suggest a reformat.