PC power problem (again)

Hey, I have a laptop thats been having a problem with it's power. When it's plugged in, it takes some fiddling before it will start to charge. I discussed this before and it turned out that the power cable the repair shop gave us for the new power pin was the wrong kind. For a while, it was working alot better but then it went back to being a pain. But now, the battery is acting up. After letting the battery fully charge overnight, I turned it on. Five minutes later, it went into hibernation mode. When I turned it back on, it was complaining about not having enough power. The battery said it only had 4% of power left. I know it was at 100% before. I let it charge and after a few moments, the charge light turned green and I turned it on and it said 100%. Not even 2 minutes later, back to hibernation mode. I was thinking that the power issue might have damaged the battery. Any clues? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

(by the way, it's a Compaq laptop that's about 4 or so years old. I don't really want to spend the money on a new battery if it's gonna damage it again. The power pin was already replaced before and the combined cost of these are almost enough to buy a new laptop thats significantly more powerful.)

new issue to, in the few minutes it was working, I was messing around and the recycling bin is empty, but the icon shows otherwise. When I click on empty recycling bin, it asks if I want to delete the 'Windows" folder. Show hidden files is selected and theres nothing inside. I'm still curious as to what the actual problem could be.

Its possible that you could just recalibrate the battery. If that doesnt work, you may be out of luck, and need a new battery. Of course, you could just keep it plugged in all the time.

Calibrating the Notebook Battery

This document applies to Compaq and HP notebooks using Microsoft Windows 98, ME, XP, and 2000.

Further reference
digg.com...:_How_to_recalibrate_your_Laptop_Battery_

Best of luck
makeitso

I was discussing this in another forum so you can check out www.techsupportforum.com... to see more about the problem. But the short version is that now the battery is making a high pitched noise when its charging. It doesn't go away after a few minutes or anything. I tried completely draining the battery before recharging and now it's doing this.