I know, but it will save electricity usage to use the battery!
Actually, using the battery will use more electricity. My thermodynamics is very rusty but whenever any charging happens some power is lost as heat.
Mark is right: if you don’t need portability, just dump the battery and use the mains adapter.
As well as charging inefficiency due to some of the current being coveted to heat, batteries are very inefficient at storing power …You ALWAYS put MUCH more power in than you’ll get out.
The batteries don’t get charged for free … the PC will be drawing more current whilst the battery charges.
Also, as a battery ages and looses its ability to hold a charge, the battery may get to the point where it NEVER gets charged enough to switch the charging circuit off … so your PC will ALWAYS be drawing the charging current on top of what it needs to run.
As Keith says, you’ll save power WITHOUT a battery, not with one. 
You may even find your power supply runs cooler now, as it’s no longer permanently trying to charge a battery that is unable to hold that charge.
Ok, thanks guys- won’t bother with a new battery. I won’t really be taking it anywhere- got the Dell netbook for that. I have been using this laptop a lot at home- more than I thought I would actually. I am using it for typing stuff up and VLC videos cos it has a much bigger screen than the Dell. My Dell is still my main one though and use that for skype as it has the webcam. I will recycle the battery.
Ok, no battery and it just turned itself off AGAIN!!! >:(
in that case it sounds to me like a hardware issue such as a bad memory chip but it might also be a bad connection at the power jack, with the battery out try gently moving the power plug at the laptop end from side to side to see if it causes the laptop to shut down suddenly
Did it shut down with a message “saying” it was shutting down, or did it just immediately go off (as though you’d pulled the plug ?
No, jiggling it or moving it doesn’t do it- the jack fits in nice and tight.
Firstly, the web pages stall then it goes to a black screen with power shutting down message.
Can you hear the fan spinning ?
Yes it is on and it sits on a cooling mat.
I think installing Conky and having a look at what’s going on from a temperature perspective is the way forward.
What’s the output of
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
I don’t mean the cooling pad fans … I mean the fan inside the laptop, as the cooling pad won’t cool the CPU enough on its own.
It could just be that the heatink inlet/outlet in blocked with dust … but as I said, overheating shutdowns are nearly always an immediate thing.
There’s some info here Where is the ACPI log? - Ask Ubuntu, maybe check out:
tail /var/log/acpid
and
dmesg | grep -i acpi
That’a what I meant too. Oh yes, I remember reading now that dust can get in computers- I will have to def take it to the PC repair man then.
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
ondemand
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ tail /var/log/acpid
tail: cannot open `/var/log/acpid’ for reading: No such file or directory
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ dmesg | grep -i acpi
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000002bfe5600 - 000000002bff8000 (ACPI NVS)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDP 000f79c0 00024 (v02 HP )
[ 0.000000] ACPI: XSDT 2bfe57b8 0005C (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-MPC 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: FACP 2bfe5684 000F4 (v04 HP 0944 00000003 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: DSDT 2bfe5a60 0EE9E (v01 HP SB400 00010000 MSFT 0100000E)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: FACS 2bff7e80 00040
[ 0.000000] ACPI: SLIC 2bfe5814 00176 (v01 HPQOEM SLIC-MPC 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: APIC 2bfe598c 00062 (v01 HP 0944 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: MCFG 2bfe59f0 0003C (v01 HP 0944 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: TCPA 2bfe5a2c 00032 (v02 HP 0944 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 2bff48fe 00059 (v01 HP HPQNLP 00000001 MSFT 0100000E)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 2bff4957 000F4 (v01 HP PSSTBLID 00000001 HP 00000001)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
[ 0.000000] Ignoring ACPI timer override.
[ 0.000000] If you got timer trouble try acpi_use_timer_override
[ 0.000000] ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x8008
[ 0.000000] ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
[ 0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x02] lapic_id[0x01] disabled)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x01] high edge lint[0x1])
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x02] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
[ 0.000000] ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: BIOS IRQ0 override ignored.
[ 0.000000] ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 21 low level)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
[ 0.000000] Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
[ 0.020737] ACPI: Core revision 20110623
[ 0.080004] PM: Registering ACPI NVS region at 2bfe5600 (76288 bytes)
[ 0.080004] ACPI: bus type pci registered
[ 0.080550] ACPI: Added _OSI(Module Device)
[ 0.080553] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Device)
[ 0.080555] ACPI: Added _OSI(3.0 _SCP Extensions)
[ 0.080558] ACPI: Added _OSI(Processor Aggregator Device)
[ 0.081867] ACPI: EC: Look up EC in DSDT
[ 0.100085] ACPI: Interpreter enabled
[ 0.100098] ACPI: (supports S0 S3 S4 S5)
[ 0.100119] ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
[ 0.100588] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: No BQC method, cannot determine initial brightness
[ 0.101245] ACPI: Power Resource [C223] (off)
[ 0.104218] ACPI: Power Resource [C1FE] (off)
[ 0.104831] ACPI: Power Resource [C217] (on)
[ 0.109436] ACPI: Power Resource [C34B] (off)
[ 0.109501] ACPI: Power Resource [C34C] (off)
[ 0.109560] ACPI: Power Resource [C34D] (off)
[ 0.109620] ACPI: Power Resource [C34E] (off)
[ 0.110185] ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x11, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62
[ 0.110463] ACPI: No dock devices found.
[ 0.110472] PCI: Ignoring host bridge windows from ACPI; if necessary, use “pci=use_crs” and report a bug
[ 0.114072] ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [C074] (domain 0000 [bus 00-ff])
[ 0.124679] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB.C074.PRT]
[ 0.124839] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB.C074.C075.PRT]
[ 0.124877] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB.C074.C0DF._PRT]
[ 0.125057] pci0000:00: Requesting ACPI _OSC control (0x1d)
[ 0.125063] pci0000:00: ACPI _OSC request failed (AE_NOT_FOUND), returned control mask: 0x1d
[ 0.125066] ACPI _OSC control for PCIe not granted, disabling ASPM
[ 0.134891] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C125] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.134960] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C126] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135026] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C127] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135091] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C128] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135157] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C129] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135224] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C12A] (IRQs 9) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135290] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C12B] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
[ 0.135364] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [C12C] (IRQs *10 11)
[ 0.136167] PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
[ 0.158827] pnp: PnP ACPI init
[ 0.158849] ACPI: bus type pnp registered
[ 0.159078] system 00:00: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c01 (active)
[ 0.162503] pnp 00:01: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0a03 (active)
[ 0.162801] pnp 00:02: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0401 (disabled)
[ 0.162926] pnp 00:03: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs IFX0102 PNP0c31 (active)
[ 0.162987] pnp 00:04: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c04 (active)
[ 0.163050] pnp 00:05: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0200 (active)
[ 0.163094] pnp 00:06: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0800 (active)
[ 0.163151] pnp 00:07: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0b00 (active)
[ 0.163211] pnp 00:08: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0303 (active)
[ 0.163265] pnp 00:09: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs SYN0118 SYN0100 SYN0002 PNP0f13 (active)
[ 0.163575] system 00:0a: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active)
[ 0.164113] system 00:0b: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active)
[ 0.164448] system 00:0c: Plug and Play ACPI device, IDs PNP0c02 (active)
[ 0.164464] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 13 devices
[ 0.164466] ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered
[ 0.164471] PnPBIOS: Disabled by ACPI PNP
[ 0.201388] Switching to clocksource acpi_pm
[ 0.292914] ACPI: Deprecated procfs I/F for AC is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared
[ 0.293079] ACPI: AC Adapter [C1BD] (on-line)
[ 0.293200] ACPI: Sleep Button [C25A]
[ 0.293297] ACPI: Lid Switch [C25B]
[ 0.293360] ACPI: Power Button [PWRF]
[ 0.293461] ACPI: Fan [C34F] (off)
[ 0.293519] ACPI: Fan [C350] (off)
[ 0.293573] ACPI: Fan [C351] (off)
[ 0.293625] ACPI: Fan [C352] (off)
[ 0.306348] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ1] (23 C)
[ 0.313454] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ2] (16 C)
[ 0.329085] ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZ3] (16 C)
[ 0.329153] ACPI: Deprecated procfs I/F for battery is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared
[ 0.329166] ACPI: Battery Slot [C1BF] (battery absent)
[ 0.329175] ACPI: Deprecated procfs I/F for battery is loaded, please retry with CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER cleared
[ 0.329182] ACPI: Battery Slot [C1BE] (battery absent)
[ 0.337964] ACPI: Battery Slot [C1BF] (battery absent)
[ 0.338038] ACPI: Battery Slot [C1BE] (battery absent)
[ 0.344813] pata_acpi 0000:00:12.0: PCI INT A → GSI 16 (level, low) → IRQ 16
[ 0.344887] pata_acpi 0000:00:14.1: PCI INT A → GSI 16 (level, low) → IRQ 16
[ 21.365406] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: No _BQC method, cannot determine initial brightness
[ 21.401296] parport_pc 00:02: reported by Plug and Play ACPI
[ 21.448446] acpi device:02: registered as cooling_device5
[ 21.457293] ACPI: Video Device [C076] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no)
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
Sorry, that should have been
sudo tail /var/log/acpid
Thanks for the other log, nothing really of note there unfortunatly 
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ sudo tail /var/log/acpid
[sudo] password for melissa:
tail: cannot open `/var/log/acpid’ for reading: No such file or directory
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
It might be easier to see what logs there are (that is lower case L) and go from there:
ls /var/log