NEW DELHI: Hewlett Packard, for a while now, has been recalling laptop batteries in light of burn and fire hazards. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has revealed that the company has recalled up to 78,500 batteries. The issue started last year when the battery packs were melting, overheating and were also recalled by the company.

Last year the number of recall reached 50,000 laptops on the basis of battery issue and this year it expanded to 78,500. As reported by CNET, the recall expansion of 78,500 batteries occurred in January 2019. HP has also confirmed that they are recalling batteries and not the laptops. However, in many cases the batteries are non-removable which means that users have to return the laptop only. But in this case also the company will only replace the battery and not the laptop.

HP has also set up a different website which explains that the batteries are affected worldwide. The laptops batteries affected include the laptop models which the company sold between April 2015 to April 2018. The models sold were -- HP Probook 64x (G2 and G3), HP ProBook 65x (G2 and G3), HP ProBook 4xx G4 (430, 440, 450, 455, and 470), HP x360 310 G2, HP ENVY M6, HP Pavilion x360, HP 11 notebook computers and HP ZBook (17 G3, 17 G4, and Studio G3) mobile workstations. The company sold all these device worldwide.

The company also said that it is also releasing an update to the BIOS to add batteries affected by the program expansion. The updated BIOS places the battery in "Battery Safety Mode" so that the notebook or workstation can be safely used without the battery by connecting to an HP power adaptor.

Battery Safety Mode is only applicable to HP products affected by this recall. If the validation process identifies a battery as being eligible for replacement, the BIOS update should be applied and the system should be rebooted. During the reboot process, an option will be presented to enable Battery Safety Mode. Accepting Battery Safety Mode causes the battery to discharge and to cease future charging until Battery Safety Mode is disabled.

Source: gadgetsnow.com