My Dell Inspiron battery will be fully charged (1100%, over 3 hours of battery remaining according to the battery icon in the system tray), then the battery meter will suddenly drop to 7% charge left, still over 3 hours (or so) remaining.  This doesn't make sense, how can you have a battery at 7% charge left, with over 3 hours left to run?

 

The yellow battery light is also flashing, and there is an "X" through the battery icon in the system tray.

 

My thought is to let the percentage charge go to 0, and maybe it will realize that the computer is still running even though it has 0% charge and re-calibrate itself?  Or maybe the computer will shut itself off when it gets to 0% charge remaining (even though there's lots of time left).  This is just wacky.

 

Are there any suggestions what can be done to remedy this situation?  Any way to get the meter to recalibrate itself?  If the "time to run" wasn't about 3 hours, I'd think that it was a bad battery, but apparently neither I nor the computer are convinced of that. 

 

By the way, when I press the battery check button on the bottom of the computer, all cells show green (good).

 

Any advice, please?

 

Thanks very much.

 

-Roger