Thinkpads Forum

Starting about a week ago, I've been having a lot of problems with stand by with my T42. If I charge it up all the way, put it in stand by and leave it when I go to sleep, when I boot up the next time, I find that the battery is either at ~9%, or it has died and the computer is off. I thought that maybe it's because this is just an old battery (about 2 years with 41% wear, but something else happened last night. I charged it up and left the power plugged in. This morning I boot up and it seems to have been in hibernate with the battery at 100%. I am sure that I put it in stand by and not hibernate last night, so it would seem that the battery got below a certain level and it went into hibernate automatically, then charged up fine.

Anyone know what could be causing this? Hardware issue? Software issue? I'm really at a loss.

That's strange, when you are using A/C power, the battery should not be used and it should not go into hibernate on its own. This won't answer your question, but check your Power Properties under Alarms and see what you have chosen for when you get to critical battery level; I have mine set to go into stand by but you can also have it go into hibernate. But again, this is only if the laptop is using battery only; which is why it is strange since you have it plugged in.

Critical is set to hibernate which is what makes me think that the battery got discharged at night during stand by and pushed it into hibernate.

Me too
Check this out.

Two things here. First, you may have lost power to your home during the night, causing your laptop to be operating on battery power. Second, your battery may be in worse shape than you think. Often old batteries will begin discharging at what appears to be a normal rate, when suddenly the percentage of battery power left drops precipitously. Try running your laptop on battery power during the day and see how it behaves.

There is an option in the BIOS in my R40 that mentions Hibernate after Suspend or something similar to that. What that does is makes the Thinkpad go to Hibernate after a certain amount of time in Suspend. This can also be seen in any of the power profiles in the battery manager software - you can set a profile that has a time-until-suspend and a time-until-hibernate setting. For example, if you set the laptop to suspend after 15 minutes and then hibernate after 2 hours, then that's exactly what it will do, assuming it works properly.

On my R40, the suspend-after-hibernate function no longer works properly after the latest BIOS update and instead hangs the machine with the hard drive and CPU running. Either restarting the machine using the power button or allowing the battery to run flat are the only ways to get out of this.

I've completely disabled hibernate in the Power Properties, since sometimes my laptop would not wake from hibernate.

Update: I swapped in my 9 cell battery which is half as old and has half as much wear. Left my computer powered up and plugged in yesterday when I went out for a few hours and came back to find it off. The other computer in the room was still on, so I don't think the room lost power.

I'll see what happens when I leave it in stand by not plugged in tonight with the 9 cell, but I'm starting to think I should just send it in for repair (the ethernet port is dead too, so I need to send it in anyway).

Anyone know of good repair places in the Boston area, or should I just send it in?

Purcy wrote:I've completely disabled hibernate in the Power Properties, since sometimes my laptop would not wake from hibernate.

Me too, but it still goes into Stand-By on it's own.

I posted an update here.

I believe I've found the problem!

Look here.