Battery Calibration

The Battery Test using PC Hardware Diagnostics Windows reports the battery to be Good but that it should be calibrated.

I received the following message: ""The battery is functioning correctly, but it needs to be calibrated.
I continued with '"Calibrate Now" . Still receive notice to calibrate the battery.
I followed the instructions below twice:

Charge the Battery Fully:

Plug in your laptop and charge the battery to 100%.
Let the Battery Rest:

Once fully charged, leave the laptop plugged in for an additional 2 hours.
Disable Sleep and Hibernate:

Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings for your current plan.
Set Put the computer to sleep and Turn off the display to Never for both On battery and Plug in.
Click Change Advanced Power Settings and disable any sleep or hibernate settings under Sleep and Battery.
Drain the Battery:

Unplug your laptop and let it run on battery power until it completely discharges and the laptop shuts down.
Recharge the Battery Fully:

Plug the laptop back in and charge it uninterrupted to 100%.
The battery report says the battery is 'Good' but still calls for 'Calibration'?? The battery is 2 years old

Any other suggestions or advice will be appreciated.

My laptop will shut down when the battery reaches 20%. This has to be disabled to 'fully' discharge the battery. But after two years you must expect some wear. How much is the capacity now as agianst new?

Run powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery-report.html" in Powershell. Look towards the bottom of the report

My laptop battery is three years old and only holds 67% of its design calacity.

New Full Capacity 33125 and Current 32155

Copilot says this,



I use HWINFO64 for battery report.

When you discharged the battery, how low did it go? 10%, 5% 0%? Look under Battery Usage in Settings...System ...Power and Battery

Right down to 0

In a command window, run the command
powercfg /batteryreport
This will generate a file battery-report.html on your Desktop. Open the file and look for Battery Capacity history. If the Full Charge Capacity hasn't gone down by more than a few percent since the battery was still new (2 years ago according to what you've said), then you might want to just leave it be, as it's best to avoid deep discharging Li-ion batteries indeed. Battery calibration only affects the charge level that the BMS (Battery Management System) reports. It does nothing to the actual Li-ion rechargeable cells themselves except shorten their lifespan. This is especially if you have to calibrate it manually (like how you have described) a few times in a row to be able to do it right, which is what HP support seems to suggest might be the case. See #5 here.

So, as a general rule, you should calibrate it only when the BMS reports a charge level that, over time, has gradually started to become so annoyingly inaccurate that this justifies the extra wear and tear that will be caused on the battery by calibrating it.

Thank you for this additional information. I have already run the battery report. (Attached) Looks OK??
Thank you for taking the time to reply

The report seems to indicate that if you continue to use your laptop and its battery the same way you have been using them for the past 2 years, the battery will need to be replaced (or need to be considered to be replaced) about 10 months from now. That is, when the battery capacity has degraded to ~70% of what it was when the battery was still new. The report also seems to indicate that you tend to use your laptop in such a way that it actively runs on battery power for many hours per day on average so, this should explain why the battery's life expectancy is going to be less than 3 years. This is still regarded as normal, though. I wouldn't worry too much about this whole calibration 'issue' TBH, as there are no clear signs of the BMS tracking the battery capacity in such a particular way that would appear to be irregular or too severely off balance, but you could always decide to post your question on the HP Community forum website or contact HP Support anyway to be sure.

Also note, a general guideline for manually calibrating a laptop battery is, in addition to how you have described, let it rest for 5 hours after it completely discharges and the laptop shuts down. Then recharge the battey fully. Avoiding to drain the battery too fast (especially after it starts to get low) also helps to mitigate the accelerated aging of the battery to some extent, but avoiding deep discharges whenever you can avoid them is still better, as are avoiding high battery temperatures and avoiding to charge or use the battery with battery temperatures close to freezing. Charging a Li-ion rechargeable battery below freezing is dangerous, but the BMS has built-in protections against this and against overheating the battery etc., BUT... on very rare occasions these built-in protections can still fail, and besides, the battery ages slower if you go easy on it by trying to avoid that which the battery doesn't like very much. I mean, there are additional factors other than merely avoiding rapid discharges and avoiding too excessively frequent charge/discharge cycles alone.

Thank you for your explanation and additional information. Much appreciated. I will leave things as they are for now and replace the battery when the time comes. Thanks again!

I don't recommend calibrating modern batteries if it requires a full discharge. Instead of the increased capacity you "think" you will get...it often adds wear on the battery (i.e. reduced full capacity).