Low battery warning

My Win 10 laptop abruptly hibernates or shuts down without warning when the battery is low. I don't use Win 10 much and I cannot find any setting for this. Am I missing something obvious? I have notifications off, which is my preference. I just want to have an audio beep or pop-up warning page inform me x minutes before shutdown so I can plug in. Surely Win 10 hasn't got rid of this useful feature?

 

Yeah I looked at the power settings (it is an Acer notebook) but I can't find anything that works for this. From past experience, what you have is how it should be.

 

Did it used to work? Note this is a hardware level function that is normally monitored by the OS. That is, the battery monitoring circuits are supposed to trigger the alert. The OS can only give the alert if told to do so. So no, W10 did not get rid if it. My "guess" is, if it used to work, is the necessary W10 driver for this function is not installed. You might want to check the Acer website for you notebook.

 

I can't remember if this ever worked. The notebook came with Win 8.1. The way I use it I used to keep it plugged in most of the time. After the battery on my remote swelled up, I realised this might not be such a good idea and since then I have run it on battery with intermittent charging, which is when I noticed the problem. I will check the Acer site.

 

In W10 Home Version 1703 OS build 15063.138 - Right click Start > Power Options > Battery - your choice.
Also > Notifications and Actions > Battery Saver.
It all works OK on my HP Notebook. I get low battery status warnings on screen. Battery icon in systray shows state of battery.

 

I checked the Acer site and there are Win 10 drivers for my model, but nothing that appears to have anything to do with battery or power management. The closest I see is a chipset driver. I am a little reluctant to try this because I don't have a lot of confidence in Windows or in Acer driver updates, for that matter. Every time I have updated Win 10 it has stuffed up my settings and my installed software. I have also had issues with Acer so am not sure how to proceed. At the moment everything works pretty well as I want it to, except for the battery notification, and I don't want all that to get ******* up. The notification definitely is not working correctly, though. I tried some settings changes I found on YouTube and had to let the battery run down to test them but they didn't work. As soon as the charge hits the low battery setting level (not even the critical level) the computer immediately shuts down or goes to hibernation or standby without any warning. I will think about this some more before deciding what to do next. The battery icon in the system tray does work normally.

 

I appreciate the response, as I appreciate all assistance I receive from WindowsBBS. There are a lot of good, knowledgeable, generous people here willing to share their knowledge.

What I don't appreciate is being censored for using a word that no normal person would ever object to. There is absolutely nothing inappropriate about the term I used, which is an Americanism that is synonymous with 'messed up'. Look it up in any dictionary. Of course the operators of this forum have every right to set their own standards but there is also something to be said for proportionality and common sense. This is ridiculously over the top.

 

Just an after thought - have Acer got a BIOS update for your model for W10??

 

Yes they do, but I feel the same reluctance about installing that. They even have a warning about it. If the computer was unusable it would be a different matter but I don't want to risk losing what I have on the chance that an update might or might not help. I am being conservative here because the computer works well for everything else and losing that would be a major blow.

 

Found this: Laptop shuts down suddenly when running on battery
Scroll down to Update #6. It would appear that Acer laptop screws have a tendency to loosen and cause these erratic shutdowns. Hope this is your answer.

 

Hi rikki, How is your Acer laptop shutdown operating? I have deliberately used my HP 1000 Notebook on battery only, to see what happens with warnings. I get notifications about battery at 15% charge - then a message saying the battery is very low and needs connecting to a charger - then it just goes Black screen and shuts down.
I can then connect to the charger and Restart the Notebook and there is no loss of data. I've done this 3 times to check the system works and it's all OK.
Contrary to your views on updates, my Notebook is on Auto updates and is current with ALL MS updates and is in fact running the "Creator" 1703 build and I have not experienced any problems.