Windows thinks laptop always on battery

kreng

I have acquired an older Asus 1300 (A1F) laptop. It works fine except Windows always thinks it's on the battery, even when it isn't. The only way to get the power plug icon to come up (and use the power settings attached to that) is to remove the battery. When plugged in the battery charges normally.

I assume this is a BIOS issue and have tried all possible APM/ACPI settings and have also reinstalled the power management software (deleted the relevant items in Device Manager and let Windows re-detect them), all to no avail. Windows does not report any errors on any of the devices.

The BIOS is Award 6.0 and the version is 107a dated 2000. This is the most recent update I can find. All the ACPI functions seem to work (display and drive shutdown, standby, hibernate, etc.), it's just that Windows doesn't detect when the ac adaptor is plugged in. This isn't a life or death issue but if anyone can shed any more light on it, I would be very grateful.

RAF

Normally the laptop will use Embedded controller to manage the battery and charge up. The status of system power used to be reported by Embeded controller to APCI O/S, but your laptop is quite old and I am not sure if it will support ACPI.

I dont think it will be helpful to update bios, I belive the problem is in Embedded Controller's firmware or hardware. Normally there is a routine in Embedded Controller's firmware to detect if AC adapter attached, if attached will report a status to O/S, actually I dont believe this routine is wrong, I do think there is a hardware issue in detecting this status, especailly it is an old laptop.

I hope it would be helpful.