14 DAY TRIAL // In the first half of February 2010, Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division, dismissed reports that Windows 7 RTM was the cause of laptop battery problems, or that the operating system was generating erroneous warnings. At that time, Microsoft indicated that Windows 7 battery warnings for notebooks were perfectly valid, and that problems with the underlying hardware or the motherboard’s BIOS were very much real. The Redmond company is now offering customers running certain LG notebooks a way to fix issues related to warning messages that start being displayed immediately after Windows 7 upgrades are completed.
“After you upgrade to Windows 7 on certain LG notebooks, the Windows Battery Meter displays the following warning message: ‘Consider replacing your battery.’ This warning is displayed even if a new battery is inserted into the laptop,” Microsoft informed.
According to the software giant, the issue described above is associated with a code defect in the system firmware (BIOS) of a number of LG notebooks, including the R500 family of laptops. In this regard, “Consider replacing your battery” Windows 7 error messages can be resolved with a BIOS update. Microsoft underlined that this specific issue, involving LG notebooks R405, P300, and R500 was generated by faults related to the way the BIOS related information on the state of the battery to Windows 7. This can cause the “Consider replacing your battery” message to be displayed incessantly.
“The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) firmware does not correctly initialize and report the Design Capacity field of the static battery information structure that is retrieved by using the _BIF method. Therefore, the Design Capacity that is reported to Windows may be much larger than the Last Full Charge capacity that is also reported in the static battery information structure. The Windows Battery Meter divides the Last Full Charge capacity by the Design Capacity to determine battery health. The Windows Battery Meter displays the ‘Consider replacing your battery’ message when the Last Full Charge Capacity is less than 40% of the Design Capacity. When this issue occurs, the Design Capacity is reported as much larger than Last Full Charge capacity,” the company explained.
Depending on the model of the LG notebook customers are running, they can visit the following websites and grab BIOS updates:
[BIOS] LG Notebook(R500) System BIOS Ver F.20