New UPS: Alarm and error messages

[Anonymous user]

Got the BN650M1 UPS back-up, and it showed as already charged so we went ahead and installed it.  After making the USB connection, the screen showed that software was installing (I didn't see the screen, my wife did; she said it was installing a program but I assumed, at the time, that it was probably just installing a driver) -- but the manual said to download and install Powerchute from the APC site, so I did that.  Later, I saw in Control Panel that there were 2 programs installed, called Powerchute -- so maybe that is part of the problem we had.

As it happened, we had a power outage within a day, that lasted several hours, presumably long enough to drain the UPS but we didnt worry about it because of having Powerchute.  When power was back on, the PC (Windows 8.1) showed that there had been an unexpected shutdown so nothing in my wife's open documents was saved, which we had hoped would be the advantage of buying a model with Powerchute -- I had thought that a "normal" shutdown would be done.  

Later in the day, clicking on the Powerchute icon showed that the battery was again fully charged, but there were repeated Powerchute messages about the power being low, and then the alarm started going off, and I was unable to get it to stop buzzing. (The alarm did not go off during the actual power outage, when presumably the battery was being drained.)  Meanwhile, by the way, the much older APS backup on my own PC worked fine, and did a proper shutdown as expected.  Does this sound like a defective unit? or a bad install of the software?  Any tips on resetting it so it will work?  Thanks.

[BillP]

Hi,

There should only be 1 version of PowerChute running on the PC. You should see 2 drivers loaded in control panel / device manager. Under batteries there should be APC UPS and under Human Interface devices you should see American Power Conversion USB UPS. Can you provide a screenshot of what is being displayed in the control panel? 

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the quick reply, Bill.  Sorry I didn't wait the short time for your prompt response, but with all that had happened I decided to uninstall the software (both instances) and exchange the UPS unit for another one (same model).  So far it is working, with no buzzers and showing 100 per cent charge, and showing only 1 Powerchute program.  We did get a pop-up message -- the screenshot isn't a good one but it says "You have less than 5 minutes of reserve power. This may not be enough to save your files and shut down your systems in the event of a power problem. Move recent equipment from battery backup to surge or you may need to upgrade your backup."  

It's true, I did have the desktop PC, monitor, printer and even a lamp in the battery backup sockets, because I really only cared about the backup lasting (1) through brief flickers or brown-outs and (2) during any longer outage, just long enough to safely shut-down the PC. So I figured, "why not" put more items on backup -- but that's not crucial for us. Anyway, after seeing this message we unplugged everything but the PC from the UPS, and it now shows 89 minutes of reserve, and I expect we'll get no further error messages.  I think all is OK now, assuming you agree that the message sounds like a normal one for when the extra equipment was plugged into battery backup sockets on a 650VA UPS.  Thanks again.