Battery Issues Need help!

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OK I have a bunch of Energizer 2500 rechargeable nimh batteries for my flash. I charge them in 3 energizer chargers I have. The problem is sometimes 1 or so battery of the bunch will be completely dead. Put it on a charger and it won't even act like it makes a connection. Put it in the flash with any other charged batteries and the flash won't work at all. If you stick it in another charger it will probably charge and work fine the next time. This is happening all the time now. What is going on. This happens with different batteries and in different chargers.

[Lowbyte]

Get a high quality charger- the "quick-chargers" that come with your batteries at the big box stores are not good for long-term health of the batteries. Energiser doesn't mind that one bit either :)

Look at something like this:
http://thomasdistributing.com/maha-mh-c801d-battery-charger.htm

Chargers like this one have each battery on a seperate conditioning circuit. It has modes to attempt to recover batteries that are not performing well. It can give you a rating on each battery, you will know which ones are still performing best and keep/use them together as a group. One bad battery in a 4 pack burns up the others faster.

The big advantage with a pro charger is it will not cook the batteries with a 1 hour charge all the time unless you tell it to do that.

You will get a much better lifetime out of your batteries with a good charger.

[JackProton]

Lowbyte is right, you need a good charger that has seperate charging circuits and can charge your NiMH batteries at a slower rate to help avoid generating life-shortening excess heat. I use the La Crosse Technology BC-900 from http://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-BC-900-AlphaPower-Battery/dp/B00077AA5Q/

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Actually I have the charger in #2 also. Tried 'conditioning' the batteries, etc. and they still randomly do this. Maybe they are already 'bad'. They've been charged 20-30 times maybe. Just ordered 16 powetec 2700's to try. I just thought someone else might have had this problem.

[Lowbyte]

Well once the batteries get cooked, they don't always come back. Just try to do most of your charging in the Lacrosse, and if you notice one of the batteries coming up lame take it out of the rotation- Its not helping the others.

[JackProton]

Sometimes you just can't bring 'em back.