the battery has reached 6% but the laptop won't shut down and still works somehow and the cross icon on battery still appears. what's happening?
It may be a problem with the battery itself.
I did try out MuNNa1988's suggestions after upgrading from Vista SP2 to Win7 SP1 on my cousin's HP dv6648se laptop and getting the "consider replacing your battery" message and none of them work. My cousin had the HP laptop for almost 8 straight years.
I then ran Nirsoft's BatteryInfoView program and found out the Battery Wear Level (NOT the Battery Charge Level) of the laptop battery was
34.5% (that's bad). I ended up ordering a laptop battery replacement for the HP dv6648se notebook PC and the new battery works perfectly and the "consider replacing your battery" message is gone.