Windows 10 . Anybody downloaded it yet?

[Butler Henderson]

Is it not a hidden icon - the up arrow to the left of the clock. \

 

A problem I've been having for a few weeks is Skype for Business (built into MS Office with, in the case of the version I have, no option to not to install it / delete ity, auto running after a fresh boot up ; have tried a number of "solutions" without it being solved.

[Izzy]

40 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I seem to have lost my battery indications since the drivers updates.(above)

Despite trying all the suggested remedies on various sites including Windows, I can't get them back.

It's not just the battery icon missing from the taskbar, but the low battery warning has gone as well, it just shuts down when it reaches a low level.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Ah, this is one of the main problems I had with my recent tussle with Win 10. It was one of the last basic items to return to normal along with sound. It was only after several of the driver update cycles I did, AVG driver then Windows update, then the same again. Somehow the wrong drivers got installed somewhere I think, but not sure which ones they might be. 
 

Could you roll back to before the last driver update? Might work...or not! Hope you get it sorted. No battery indication is a pain with a laptop. 

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, Izzy said:

 
 

Could you roll back to before the last driver update? Might work...or not! Hope you get it sorted. No battery indication is a pain with a laptop. 

Not too bothered about the battery indicator as I rarely consult it (It's probably been off more than on on this laptop) but not getting the low battery warning is a PITA.

[beast66606]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

Not too bothered about the battery indicator as I rarely consult it (It's probably been off more than on on this laptop) but not getting the low battery warning is a PITA.

 

Any use ?

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/battery-status/9wzdncrfhz6p?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

 

Or for a report

 

open a powershell - or cmd - window

 

powercfg /batteryreport

 

then open the html file

Edited January 9, 2021 by beast66606

[melmerby]

32 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

Any use ?

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/battery-status/9wzdncrfhz6p?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

 

Or for a report

 

open a powershell - or cmd - window

 

powercfg /batteryreport

 

then open the html file

Interesting. Thanks for the tips.

I give them a try on the laptop tomorrow.

[melmerby]

Tried the battery report (powercfg / battery report)

result: "No batteries are currently installed"

 

Can that new battery app be downloaded without having to use a Microsoft account?

When I clicked on it it went straight to my MS account and wanted e-mail verification, however my laptop has no e-mail account set up on it.

 

Edit got round it by using my other PC to verify the account.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by melmerby

[melmerby]

OK I think I have installed the new battery app.

What should it be doing?

[beast66606]

3 minutes ago, melmerby said:

OK I think I have installed the new battery app.

What should it be doing?

 

Don't know !  (my notification area battery indicator works) - it looks from the docs as if its an app you can use, I just spotted it and thought it may help you, at least in the short term.

[melmerby]

7 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

Don't know !  (my notification area battery indicator works) - it looks from the docs as if its an app you can use, I just spotted it and thought it may help you, at least in the short term.

I'm a bit concerened about the "No batteries installed" result from the powershell command

I tried it before the install and after withthe same result.

In Device Manager no battery is shown in the system, just a charger

[RFS]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

Tried the battery report (powercfg / battery report)

result: "No batteries are currently installed"

 

Can that new battery app be downloaded without having to use a Microsoft account?

When I clicked on it it went straight to my MS account and wanted e-mail verification, however my laptop has no e-mail account set up on it.

 

Edit got round it by using my other PC to verify the account.

 

 

Just run this on my laptop. Correct command is powercfg /batteryreport and it created an html file on my /users/username directory. 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, RFS said:

 

Just run this on my laptop. Correct command is powercfg /batteryreport and it created an html file on my /users/username directory. 

Yes, and it reports "No batteries are currently installed"

 

 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by melmerby

[melmerby]

Further to this

The xml logs of battery usage for the current battery starts in May 2019 with it's capacity and regular updates every time it is charged.

These entries stop at 23:59:59 on 31/12/2020

 

It's almost like a timing bug that stops working after the end of 2020!

Somehow that seems a bit far fetched:

 

[beast66606]

Very weird - I suspect an update of some form stopping the battery communication which is why your icon has gone. As to what caused that ....

[melmerby]

I posted a question about this on the MS Forum.

The first reply was blocked by MS moderators and when I checked the e-mail notification from MS it said it was a scam!

Looking at the contents in the e-mail It says something like

 

"Hi, welcome to microsoft community, my name is john.

If you phone XXXXXX one of our experts will help you"

 

The phone number was all in weird characters that a human could understand but a machine probably wouldn't.

Their wasting their time with me as I don't phone numbers I don't know and I have been on the forum since 2015 so not a likely victim.

 

 

[Butler Henderson]

Have you looked at this

https://windowsreport.com/no-battery-detected-windows-10/?amp

[melmerby]

37 minutes ago, Butler Henderson said:

Have you looked at this

https://windowsreport.com/no-battery-detected-windows-10/?amp

Thanks for the link

Unfortunately I have tried most of those but most fall down straight away as there is no battery even listed in device manager, so many of the tests run OK but cannot check a non existent (according to the system) battery even though it is there and charges OK.

 

I'm wondering possibly, whether the battery monitoring circuit (in the battery pack itself) has failed, so no info is being passed to Windows.

[Butler Henderson]

If the battery easily removable have tried taking it out and then putting it back in.

[Izzy]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

Thanks for the link

Unfortunately I have tried most of those but most fall down straight away as there is no battery even listed in device manager, so many of the tests run OK but cannot check a non existent (according to the system) battery even though it is there and charges OK.

 

I'm wondering possibly, whether the battery monitoring circuit (in the battery pack itself) has failed, so no info is being passed to Windows.

This is exactly the same issue that I had with my little laptop as in previous posts. According to a new and fresh Win 10 install it did not have either a sound card or battery, although I knew it did and both worked perfectly well. Web searches have revealed this is quite a common occurrence with either new Win 10 installs or updates.  Certain hardware is suddenly no longer recognised because the software/drivers running it have gone missing or been ‘upgraded ‘ to a ‘signed only’ version which is incompatible with it. Updated drivers not working with older hardware is not new, but if they are automatic and not user inspired then the user has no idea what needs to be rolled back to undo the damage. With a new install you are really stuffed as it were. 
 

I really think rolling back to a known good working state is the answer, before the last round of AVG driver updates you undertook that you have mentioned in your post of the 31.12.2020. Those may be the cause. Perhaps it lists them and will undo them if asked. 

[melmerby]

31 minutes ago, Izzy said:

 

I really think rolling back to a known good working state is the answer, before the last round of AVG driver updates you undertook that you have mentioned in your post of the 31.12.2020. Those may be the cause. Perhaps it lists them and will undo them if asked. 

I have tried so far to "restore" two of the updates it did with no luck but I shall persevere with that route. There was quite a few, somewhat more than the other PCs I have tried it on.

As you say, it's a bit of a co-incidence that the AVG updates were the same day the battery monitor stopped working.

I didn't notice anything amiss because the battery symbol was (not unusually) missing from the task bar anyway but what was different was that I got no low battery warning after first battery discharge after the updates. I have never had that situation before.

 

I am always a little concerned about third party solutions to Windows problems as they sometimes add more problems as they solve others.

This may have been the case this time.

After the 30 day trial is up I don't think I will bother buying a subscription to AVG Driver Update.

 

Years ago I bought a program called "Crash Guard" which was supposed to stop Windows 95 problems. It actually made it much, much worse!

[kevinlms]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

I'm wondering possibly, whether the battery monitoring circuit (in the battery pack itself) has failed, so no info is being passed to Windows.

I suspect that is the case.

I have a cordless drill with modular rechargeable batteries for it. It won't do anything at all, even though I checked the battery with a multimeter, which claims it to be fully charged.

The drill and charger, just ignore the battery test button and refuses to trickle charge the battery, respectively.

 

A new battery works perfectly.

Edited January 11, 2021 by kevinlms
More info

[Izzy]

Hi Keith,

 

Been digging around in AVG driver updater. There is a backup storage file where all the zipped driver folders it loads are stored, along with their installation dates/times. It might assist in tracking down what got updated and needs taking back. You can access this from running AVG and going through settings. 

 

This is the direct link C:\ProgramData\AVG\DriverUpdate\backupstorage

 

Having just had my Sprog IIv2 updated to use signed drivers and got it installed and working nicely I was concerned to see AVG wanted to update the 'out-of-date' drivers just installed, so I will now un-install it. I am grateful for it's use in rescuing the laptop, but I have never been an advocate of constantly updating drivers if the current ones work okay. But I will save the zipped file contents to a docs file to refer to and use if I need to.

 

Bob

 

[melmerby]

I decided to go back to the restore point that AVG Driver Update says it created and work from there, by re-installing each upgrade one by one.

The problem is I can't find a restore point.

 

EDIT

A bit more digging and I found it and have now restored to prior the first AVG scan

The battery app is still not showing!

Next will be a new battery as this one was starting to drop off, charge wise.

 

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by melmerby

[melmerby]

I think that it might not be a Windows problem as I had a catastrophic failure yesterday.

 

Windows just died whilst I was browsing RMWeb, the touchpad and keyboard stopped working and the screen froze.

I waited a while and it didn't recover so I shut it down with the power key, even that took a while to respond.

When I next booted up I got the Acer splash screen, then the Windows start page with the whirling balls, then nothing. I left it for an hour with a blank screen but regular HDD activity and nothing.

Reluctantly I decided to do a complete restore from the recovery screen (which you could access at boot up)

This effectively is re-installing Windows.

1 Hour later it was all up and running again with some program icons working, some not and most log in info lost. So quite a bit of work resetting it to what it was.

 

However still no battery icon.

A new battery is on it's way so I should be able to try that soon, if it's not a battery fault then I'm baffled and so it seems  is everyone on MS support.

[PhilJ W]

There was an update as I was shutting down last night. This morning there is an icon bottom right (next to the battery symbol) called 'Meet now'. It looks like some sort of zoom feature, has anyone used it?

 

[melmerby]

56 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

There was an update as I was shutting down last night. This morning there is an icon bottom right (next to the battery symbol) called 'Meet now'. It looks like some sort of zoom feature, has anyone used it?

 

After the restore the laptop got the update but  I haven't investigated any extra features.

This desktop is currently installing it.