Why is Windows reporting a battery charge with my desktop?

I have a desktop computer.

Get-wmiobject win32_computersystem | select manufacturer,model

Manufacturer        : Hewlett-Packard
Model               : HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF

For a while it would give me a icon in the systray stating that my battery was not present. haha good one Windows. I don't have a battery like that.

Some time recently it started reporting a full battery charge

also

Why is my Windows 10 reporting a full battery charge when no battery is present?

OS Name:                   Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
OS Version:                10.0.10586 N/A Build 10586

My Windows is out of date but I could not find anything relevant to this issue suggesting it was a bug.

Matt

Posted 2018-01-09T13:35:25.283

Reputation: 1 128

2Use Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) to find any battery-like devices. – user1686 – 2018-01-09T14:20:07.373

6Run this: wmic path Win32_Battery get Caption,Description,DeviceID,Name – jdwolf – 2018-01-09T14:51:10.563

9@jdwolf Wasnt aware of that class. Yep, one shows up there. ...... and its for the UPS under my desk that I don't think about. – Matt – 2018-01-09T15:51:56.230

6@Matt WMIC is one of the main reasons I still have hope in Windows :> – jdwolf – 2018-01-09T16:10:33.143

3one note, update your Windows. you use version 1511 which his out of support, only Education and Enterprise editions of 1511 get updates. so update to 1703 or 1709 – magicandre1981 – 2018-01-09T16:31:52.103

prob because it targets mobile as well - so it was easier to just leave it there instead of determining if the hardware is truly mobile or not – NKCampbell – 2018-01-10T05:14:50.913

Answers

You can run the following command at the cmd to list devices Windows thinks are batteries:

wmic path Win32_Battery get Caption,Description,DeviceID,Name

You can also go to the Device Manager under Batteries. However, the command will provide you with a description and model number to work with a bit faster.

The battery icon appearing on a desktop is usually caused by a USB-connected UPS battery.

jdwolf

Posted 2018-01-09T13:35:25.283

Reputation: 1 974

2Also note, Windows is smart enough to automatically apply sleep, shutdown, or hibernate rules as-if-it-were a laptop with an internal battery, much like bundled UPS software acclaim(ed) to do. If you go into power options you can configure these options. Depending on what your computer is doing at the time, other connected devices, and the remaining capacity on the UPS, you might have a few minutes, or just barely enough time to save your work. Neat! – Julia McGuigan – 2018-01-09T22:13:03.893

8@J.T.McGuigan: Definitely a good idea to change the emergency shutdown level from 5% to 50%, depending on how big your UPS is. On mine 5% is literally 10s of remaining life. And you don't want to deep discharge the UPS anyway. – Zan Lynx – 2018-01-09T22:56:03.920

1How awful of a UPS (or watt-guzzling of a computer) do you need for 5% to only last 10s?! 5% of mine is something like 20-60 minutes. – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE – 2018-01-10T04:36:15.003

9@R.. Many a UPS is intended to safely shut-down in case of power outage, not to keep working through the day regardless of outage. In that case a maximum capacity of 20 minutes is more than enough. Degradation over time could shorten that considerably (just like with laptop batteries) and the 10s may be somewhat of a hyperbole. – None – 2018-01-10T06:36:32.123

5@R..: If your UPS can power your desktop computer for 20 hours, are you even using it? – Lightness Races with Monica – 2018-01-10T11:44:28.220

Jdwolf, an excellent solution! Can you please do us a favor and cite your source for this answer? – Run5k – 2018-01-11T13:53:47.290

@Run5k wmic /? – jdwolf – 2018-01-11T14:08:13.307

@R.. The desktop and the monitor consume about 500W if I'm gaming. More, sometimes. It's an overclocked 5960x and a 1080Ti. The UPS is an APC BackUPS 1500 from 2014. Now, according to an APC chart I found, the 1500 at 500W load should last 4 minutes. 4600.05 is 12 seconds. – Zan Lynx – 2018-01-19T23:12:11.460

@Run5k It may have been original – Dmitry Kudriavtsev – 2018-02-04T20:22:17.280

This could be because you have a UPS connected.

It does not seem to happen all the time, though. From personal experience, on one desktop, when I installed Windows 10, it seems to have detected it as a laptop. Oddly enough, my other desktop also has a UPS but no battery icon and Windows Mobility Center is not installed.

If you do not want the icon there, I suppose you could try to remove or disable Mobility Center. I just learned to ignore the icon. You could also hide it from the notification area.

Tim

Posted 2018-01-09T13:35:25.283

Reputation: 61

2Hi! Welcome to Super User. Unfortunately, your answer was mistaken as an attempt to ask a related question (we get that occasionally) and temporarily hidden. I've edited it to be a bit less chatty and make the actual answer clearer. We're a bit different from forums you may be familiar with, and it's best if answers obviously address what the question is asking first. – Bob – 2018-01-10T09:55:44.367

Do you happen to have a wireless mouse, keyboard, game controller or similar?

It is possible that the drivers for those devices tell Windows "this device has a battery, level XX%". Windows would then duly report that, while missing the fact that it is not powering the whole system, like a UPS or a laptop battery would be.

telcoM

Posted 2018-01-09T13:35:25.283

Reputation: 2 016

It's my UPS that I don't think about. jdwolf's comment got me to find it. https://superuser.com/questions/1283879/why-is-windows-reporting-a-battery-charge-with-my-desktop#comment1898258_1283879

– Matt – 2018-01-09T15:52:15.950

Do you have examples of such devices? Frankly, I don't think this is possible. – Dmitry Grigoryev – 2018-01-10T13:09:55.797

On my Linux desktop, the KDE power management displays the power status of Logitech wireless mice just like it displays the battery status of my work laptop. I think I once saw similar behavior in Windows with some obscure wireless mouse+keyboard combo, but I admit my memory might be inaccurate. But basically, if any driver registers to the OS saying "I'm a battery", then the OS will display it as one. The OS cannot second-guess the information reported by the driver of some hardware device. – telcoM – 2018-01-10T13:39:59.007