I just bought a brand new battery for my compaq 1400T laptop.. it has a clean install of xp pro on it, but the battery will not charge. I've tried everything to get it to charge.. the comp sees it fine.. i've gone into safe mode and removed the acpi's in device manager several times, to no avail... is there a setting someone within xp, to disable/enable the use of a battery on a laptop?... I'm wondering, since i didn't have a battery in it before, if it's disabled.. i'd greatly appreciate Any help i can get here...

I suspect it's a hardware problem - the battery in a laptop should just start charging as soon as you connect the unit to the mains, irrespective of any operating system installed. Did you buy the laptop secondhand & did it have a battery then? - that may be the reason why it didn't have one. "I know that I'm mad - I've always been mad..."

I agree with Johnr... the battery should be charging regardless of XP or any other OS. It should even charge with the machine off and no OS operating at all. If it is not charging then the problem is the machine and not the OS. ALL NEW laptops come with batteries so you must have bought the machine used....and the battery problem is probably why they sold it.