"You are using an unsupported battery"

[Nittersing]

Anybody dealt with this message before? (Dell laptop)

It has an internal battery. Message just started this morning. PC is about 6mo old.

Ran diagnostics which said nothing was wrong, but found 8 updates which I installed. One of the updates required a reboot and was an update to the BIOS

Malwarebytes says there's nothing wrong.

But I keep getting that pop-up message... which goes away as if I had clicked on "OK" (I haven't) and comes right back again.

Any ideas?

[usonian]

1. Hope you find an answer.

My phone said "battery in trouble" .... months ago. A charge lasts days.
My car said "windshield washer fluid low" and it's nearly full.

Software will kill us all until it's banned!

[kozar]

2. Try, taking battery totally out for

About 5 mins, then reinstall and boot? I’m better with desktops, but I would try this.

[Nittersing]

3. It's not a battery I can just pull out...

Not sure I'm ready to open it up...

[usonian]

7. Found some ideas to try, however ...

If it's an internal battery, as in the little one that keeps the clock running, that makes no sense at all.
Might have to call Dell. (Hope they aren't partying in Dubai, where many call centers are. But if they are in the Philippines, forget it. They're partying on Christmas Eve.)

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Warning-The-battery-is-not-recommended-battery/td-p/7261955

Good luck.

[Nittersing]

9. Well... mostly that just told me how to turn off the pop-up

which would be nice, but doesn't really address why I'm getting it in the first place. And then the rest was about replacement batteries which is a road I haven't gone down yet.

I have a local guy coming over on Monday, but was hoping I could beat him to it!

[VMA131Marine]

4. Have you tried saying nice things to the battery?

Are you telling it it’s doing a good job?

Maybe its just lonely.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. Is it an OEM from DELL direct or was it an Amazon/eBay or other sourced replacement battery?

.

There is a whole bootleg battery industry in China that floods the US market with bogus batteries that are not up to OEM specs and often do not have the fire-prevention logic chips in them to prevent excessive charges, which degrade the battery to the point where it can catch fire.

Boing Boing did a thing on this years ago. The battery clones can even fake out manufacturer supply chains, that's how good of a copy they are. While I like buying stuff on eBay and Amazon at times, laptop batteries should NEVER be purchased there. Only from the OEM supplier.


Also, to keep your battery lasting the longest, perform full charges and deplete it 90% or more before recharging. Batteries have a counter, roughly around 1000-1200 charge cycles to prevent the breakdown that causes fires. My sister would buy a battery and then six months later say it was dead. What she was doing was carrying the laptop from room to room and each time plugging it in. She would do that 5-10 times a day, and each plug-in counted for a charge cycle, so when the battery counter reached near the limit, it would signal for a replacement. If you properly charge your laptop, you should get 3 years or more out of it. My Thinkpad X1 is over 3 years and it's battery life is around 90%.

.

[Nittersing]

6. It's about six months old, from Best Buy

Never had any work done on it, so assuming OEM.

[TheBlackAdder]

8. That would be 50/50. Best Buy's supply chain might not include OEM or allow clones or 3rd Party.

.

A battery reset might work, or at least buy you some time. You can always leave the power in or remove the battery while using a power cord as a temporary fix, but any brief loss or interruption of power will cause a reboot, since there is no battery installed.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-au/000139016/how-to-perform-hard-reset

Symptoms

If your Dell computer does not turn on or boot into the operating system, it is recommended that you first perform a hard reset. Performing a hard reset fixes many problems by draining the residual power that may be causing the problem.
NOTE: Performing a hard reset does not impact any personal files on the computer.


Cause

The capacitors on the system board can store residual or static electricity (also known as flea power) even if the computer is turned off, disconnected from the AC adapter and without a battery.


Resolution

To perform a hard reset on a Dell computer, follow these steps.

1. Turn off the computer.

2. Disconnect the power cable (for desktops), or disconnect the AC adapter and remove the battery (for Dell laptops with removable battery).

NOTE: For Dell laptops that have a nonremovable battery, learn How to Reset Real Time Clock (RTC) to Recover Your Dell Laptop.
For Dell laptops with removable batteries, see the user guide of your Dell laptop for step-by-step instructions to safely remove the battery.

NOTE: On select Dell Latitude laptops, learn How to Use Forced ePSA to Recover from POST or Boot Failure on Dell Latitude PCs.


3. Disconnect all devices such as USB drives, printers, webcams, and media cards (SD/xD).

4. Press and hold the power button for 15 to 20 seconds to drain the residual power.

5. Connect the power cable (for desktops) or AC adapter and battery (for laptops).

6. Turn on the computer.

.

[Nittersing]

11. Think I'd better wait...

First, my computer is turning on and is powering up to the OS (with the annoying pop-up) so I'm not sure it's addressing my issue.

And, since it's an internal battery I would have to learn "How to Reset Real Time Clock (RTC) to Recover Your Dell Laptop" and reading through that link makes me think I'd better have a pro look at it. I don't want to screw up the BIOS.

[TheBlackAdder]

13. It seems like you have a gray market battery, and something in the laptop software is detecting it.

.

Right Click your Windows icon on the lower left and select Terminal (admin) or Command Prompt (admin or run as admin). You may have a pop-up asking to run as administrator, click it.

Type at the DOS prompt: powercfg /batteryreport

This will create an HTML file with your battery information. The path and file name will be returned.

Go to File Explorer and click on that file.

It will give information such as your laptop info and OS build, then a report on the details of your battery, the name of it, the manufacturer, the serial number, the chemistry, the design capacity, the full charge capacity and the cycle count. Then it gives your recent usage, and I was misspoken, my battery is still at 100% of its capacity. You will see if you got an OEM battery or another one.

As an example, my laptop is 3 years old and it has a cycle count of 406, so I am not even half the way to hitting the charge limit.

Note: The battery manufacturer might not say DELL, but it might be the company Dell subcontracts their batteries, so you need to verify the manufacturer with Dell support to see if it's a legit OEM one.

.

[Timewas]

10. Probably

More than likely if you installed an aftermarket replacement battery in a Dell and it is not sold by them that would do it... Dell is extremely proprietary and usually won't even work with non dell products..

[Nittersing]

12. No new battery

As I said in the OP, this is a six month old laptop. I haven't done any work on it.

[TheBlackAdder]

14. Either Dell got a batch of gray market batteries in their supply chain or someone did a switcheroo.

.

Another cause is a software glitch which needs Dell Support.

When I would buy from Dell, I would buy their business lines, because that gives 24x7 US support staff. The consumer line would often route to off-shore call centers where there would be ESL issues. I kind of think that there were so many complaints the consumer line might have been switched back to the USA, but not sure. Regular people can buy business models. The same thing applies to HP--you get far more support with business systems. My HP Z2 Mini workstation has 3-year full on-site support standard.

.

[Nittersing]

15. Well, I may have inadvertently fixed it!

When I unplugged the AC adaptor, the laptop shut down dead. I closed and opened it (no power button...) numerous times and it did not power up. So I left it off and unplugged for about 15 minutes. (So, maybe a hard reset?)

At this point, I don't remember if I just plugged it back in or just closed and opened it again... but it started up just fine. I unplugged it and and it stayed on.... and the battery icon says it's at 100%.

And I'm no longer getting the pop-up.

[usonian]

16. In short, magic.

I use that a lot. Congratulations!

[Eugene]

17. Sounds like you effectively did the battery reset from reply #2.

[Nittersing]

18. Exactly.

Just had to figure out how to do it!