Laptop drains battery when off

I've got a Toshiba Tecra 8000, PentII 300, 128MB, 14.1 LCD, 6GB HD, 24x CD, Xircom RealPort 10/100 NIC, Win98 SE. I've had it for about 6 months, bought off lease.
Problem is, the system drains the battery when it is powered off, even when I'm sure its done a full shutdown and power off. If it was a little bit to substitute for a CMOS battery I'd understand, but it will drain a fully charged battery in a week of sitting by my desk. I once left it sitting for just over a week after charging fully, and it was totally dead. Running normally, I get 2.5~3 hours or so on that battery. Any thoughts?

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Question :I have just recently bought a Toshiba 3000-X4 Laptop. Ever since having bought it the battery will discharge even not while in use ie. Turned off. It takes about 6 days of non use for the battery power to reach 5%.

Any help with this please.

Response : Normal for the battery to discharge 8-15% per 24hrs.

Seems there is a lot of battery problems with these models posted,maybe this one is also relavent to yours.

That sounds about right. Oh well. By following links, I did manage to find some usefull info on loading win2k on this thing, and that's what I just finished doing. Turns out the place I bought it from was nice enough to do the BIOS upgrade before selling it, too.

It's called leakage, all batteries do it, and it's not nearly as nasty as it sounds (nothing actually leaks). It's caused by the battery discharging through itself.

Combine this with the standby current, which could quite easily be 0.5A, and you see why your battery discharges. You'll notice the same thing if you leave your car turned off for a week, then try and start it.

If you're not going to be using the battery for a few days, either take it out, or leave the charger plugged in (assuming you're not using an older laptop), as modern chargers integrate a conditioning circuit.

Sorry, there's no real answer, that's just the way it is.