Weird - new A31 battery busted by booting Ubuntu LiveCD?
Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 3:48 pm
Hi everyone,
I have a strange problem, where booting a Ubuntu Linux LiveCD to try out that OS seems to have fried a new A31 battery in such a way that it won't charge (even in Windows).
My A31 has the standard Win XP-Pro install with the newest drivers. I booted a Ubuntu Linux (Feisty, 7.04) LiveCD to try it out that OS on the A31 without having to install anything on the hard drive. It booted fine, and detected some things (sound, screen dimming ok, video sort of ok - not quite the ATI Radeon driver)... some things not ok, like suspend and hibernate.. at least out of the box.
The battery gauge seemed to work. However, I tried to let it drain to the bottom to see if it would auto-suspend near empty. Instead, it just lost power (blacked out) at 20-30% battery life or so - I guess the estimate of battery life was way off.
But that's not it - now comes the weird part. I turned on the machine again and booted back into Windows as usual -- the battery would *not* charge. Thinkpad battery info says 10.7V voltage, but 0.00A current. I tried taking the battery out and putting back in, rebooting, etc. Nothing helped. It seems the battery was physically busted by this draining "without proper oversight" in Linux -- either the battery itself is damaged, or else if there's a charging circuit inside that got confused. To me it seems it would be the second, since if a very high resistance was formed somewhere in the battery, a small charge current might cause a large voltage rise and trick the laptop into thinking it is charged, but the current in battery info is not small, it is actually 0.00A. So it seems like it's not even trying to charge..
My Windows machine works fine with my old battery (sort of, see my other post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=43347), so it must be the new battery..
Anyone know how I can figure out what's wrong, whether I can fix it (e.g. software reset of battery charging circuit, etc..).
Thanks for any help - or even thoughts on what could have actually happened.. it's kind of curious. As is, if it's true that my battery is damaged, it seems to me you could purposefully write a virus that actually busts people's hardware, i.e. batteries. Kinda scary.
Milos
I have a strange problem, where booting a Ubuntu Linux LiveCD to try out that OS seems to have fried a new A31 battery in such a way that it won't charge (even in Windows).
My A31 has the standard Win XP-Pro install with the newest drivers. I booted a Ubuntu Linux (Feisty, 7.04) LiveCD to try it out that OS on the A31 without having to install anything on the hard drive. It booted fine, and detected some things (sound, screen dimming ok, video sort of ok - not quite the ATI Radeon driver)... some things not ok, like suspend and hibernate.. at least out of the box.
The battery gauge seemed to work. However, I tried to let it drain to the bottom to see if it would auto-suspend near empty. Instead, it just lost power (blacked out) at 20-30% battery life or so - I guess the estimate of battery life was way off.
But that's not it - now comes the weird part. I turned on the machine again and booted back into Windows as usual -- the battery would *not* charge. Thinkpad battery info says 10.7V voltage, but 0.00A current. I tried taking the battery out and putting back in, rebooting, etc. Nothing helped. It seems the battery was physically busted by this draining "without proper oversight" in Linux -- either the battery itself is damaged, or else if there's a charging circuit inside that got confused. To me it seems it would be the second, since if a very high resistance was formed somewhere in the battery, a small charge current might cause a large voltage rise and trick the laptop into thinking it is charged, but the current in battery info is not small, it is actually 0.00A. So it seems like it's not even trying to charge..
My Windows machine works fine with my old battery (sort of, see my other post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=43347), so it must be the new battery..
Anyone know how I can figure out what's wrong, whether I can fix it (e.g. software reset of battery charging circuit, etc..).
Thanks for any help - or even thoughts on what could have actually happened.. it's kind of curious. As is, if it's true that my battery is damaged, it seems to me you could purposefully write a virus that actually busts people's hardware, i.e. batteries. Kinda scary.
Milos