Maximum charge icon for power keeps going down....

[Akhet]

For some time now my power / charge icon in the right hand corner of the screen has not displayed 100 percent charge as normal. It has begun to diminish so that now the maximum charge is at 60 percent no matter how long the comp is connected to power. Even stranger, sometime i put the cursor over the icon and it will display 100 percent for a second before reverting to 60. For a long time the charge was stuck at 68-69 percent but yesterday it seems to have fallen again and the highest i can get it is 62.

[Number Six]

First - what kind of battery is this? IE:NiCad, NiMH, LIon, etc.
Second - how old is it?

Try letting it discharge completely, then let it charge up.

[redwudz]

You should time how long the laptop runs when the battery is new and you are just running the PC at idle, no programs running. Then check it again periodically. The battery charge meters on laptops aren't that accurate. If the PC still seems to run about the same amount of time as it was new, I wouldn't worry too much.

But if the runtime has shortened quite a bit, your battery may be wearing out.

But you could go to your laptop manufacturers site and see if they have a newer version of the battery software. Or check with a forum or user group for the laptop.

[SingSing]

For some time now my power / charge icon in the right hand corner of the screen has not displayed 100 percent charge as normal. It has begun to diminish so that now the maximum charge is at 60 percent no matter how long the comp is connected to power. Even stranger, sometime i put the cursor over the icon and it will display 100 percent for a second before reverting to 60. For a long time the charge was stuck at 68-69 percent but yesterday it seems to have fallen again and the highest i can get it is 62.

That is normal with old laptop with old battery. The old style battery monitor chips do a very bad job, even when the batteries are okay. All bets are off when battery is old.