Ok, so I have a 360 wireless controller and it has the battery pack that has the lithium battery built in. A while back I noticed that it wouldn't hold charge for that long so I simply used the chord to use the controller so that it would use the main power rather than the battery. After a while I noticed that sometimes the battery indicator wouldn't show up, but thought nothing much of it at the time. Recently I noticed that it no longer detects this battery anymore and it can't be that the battery hasn't been charged as it's been plugged in for a long time now. Every time I try to use this controller without plugging it in, it simply does not work. So I'm wondering if it's that my battery pack is dead or perhaps it's something else. I've tried this battery back on my other controller and it didn't work either.

Any suggestions? And yeah I know I can just buy a new battery pack, it's around $12 or so. But I'm kind of broke so I rather not spend more $ lol..

Sounds like the battery pack to me. Maybe you could find a place out there that will give you a credit toward a new battery pack if you trade your old one in. You know those going green people love it when you do that.
P.S. I would make sure to check if the controller will work off of the cord without the battery pack in there before making any decisions.

Yeah it works without the battery pack.

Luckily I have another one from my other controller, but that one uses rechargeable AA batteries rather than lithium which isn't that good for long gaming sessions :P

Looks like I'll have to cough up some cash for a new battery pack..

Yeah, just don't spend in excess until you have enough. Heck, if I trusted the net I would send you the money.

Well it sounds similar to what happens to most batteries after a while, they end up relying completely on the power cable. E.g. My brothers old laptop's battery stopped working, since it was CONSTANTLY charging, even when he wasn't using it, and since it's full, it has to do something, as most rechargable batteries don't actually have self-resistors to stop the charging once it's full, so it kinda kills the battery. (mind you, that's mainly when they're under constant charge)

So if you've left it charging when you didn't need it at any time, that that may have contributed to the damage..

Yeah that's probably what happened.

I was reading some stuff about that last night, and then it clicked in. The thing was that the battery was slowing dying anyway as it was only holding charge for a few hours, and it kept annoying me when the battery just flat out died during a match so I figured let me just leave it plugged in without thinking about the long term effects.. I should have learned from my previous battery experiences.

The moral of the story, Micro$oft wants your $$$!

I leave my batteries on the charger all the time, I'll have to check on that, but I can tell you, go to a game storer and ask about used bettery packs, GameCrazy(part of Hollywood video) will give them to you for $9

How long have you had the battery pack? Lithium batteries generally don't suffer from memory effects like NiMH batteries, but it's also possible to get a faulty battery that won't last long. However, if you've had it a while, I suggest going to get a new one.

Well I'm not sure how long it's been around as I bought it used off a friend, so I guess it was sort of worn out to begin with. As for buying a used battery pack, I'll probably just cough up a few more bucks for a new one as getting another used one might be a bad purchase in the long run.

I would get new. You don't know how much a used was abused until you turn it on. Batteries die after some time. They can be charged up a limited amount of times. Like the original DS battery pack has a 500 charge up lifespan. After that, it weakens quickly. Same with any battery. I learned after losing my computer battery, keep it off the charger when it is at full power. Lithium Ion batteries lose 1% of their charge everyday. And in use they lose about 2% every 8 minutes. Depending on consumption rules that out though.