After "Battery Recondition" T42 dead, won't charge

[Ken Fox]

I did a quick search in these forums and couldn't find this exact issue; if it is already well known, I apologize for posing it again.

My T42 is about 18 months old and in reality not had a whole lot of use. When used, I tend to use it on AC power. After reading some posts on this board about battery degradation over time, I decided to look at my battery condition in (I think the program was "Battery Maximizer," and I was advised to let the machine "recondition" the battery. So I did so, and as instructed plugged the AC cord back in and let it "recondition" over night; it was already late the progress was too slow for me to remain up. When I went back to it this morning, it showed 2 minutes remaining in the cycle and the battery discharged to 1 or 2 percent. I waited several minutes and nothing changed.

At that point, I clicked on "stop recondition." The dialog box that came up appeared not to let me do that, but then ultimately I got the option to "recondition" again. I shut down the laptop (through windows XP) and it would not charge or recognize (with the battery light) that it was charging.

I decided to remove the AC cord and battery and let it sit 15 minutes, then replaced the battery and plugged it in. Nothing. No charge light, nothing. When I attempt to start up the system it is obviously trying to use a discharged battery and you get about a second where it sounds like it is going to start and then it stops (afterall, it is trying to restart a system with a dead battery).

For now, I've unplugged the laptop (since it isn't charging anyway), removed the battery, and I'm going to let it sit a few hours while I'm away from the house. Presumably this might reset the innerds and allow the machine to recharge.

When I started the recondition, I had a battery that showed 5 discharge cycles (as I said, I don't usually use it on battery power) but a capacity of only 37 (forget the unit) out of 45 or whatever is normal for the 08K8193 battery that came with it. On battery power, fully charged, it showed a 2 hour run life, which I realize is low (after all, that is why I "reconditioned" it).

Assuming the machine won't boot and won't charge and won't recognize the AC adapter, is there some obvious fix for this?

Finally, another question, for those who really know something about the lithium ion batteries that IBM/Lenovo has used in these laptops over time. First, there are a number of part numbers that have been used over the T4x series lifetime for the 6 and 9 cell batteries that fit these laptops. Are there functional differences? Can you take one of the older FRU numbers and use it on a late series T43 (i.e. are all the FRUs cross compatible across the T4x series?) And finally, is there a shelf life issue with "new old stock" 6 and 9 cell IBM-OEM batteries that may have been sitting around for a while but never used?

Best and thanks,

ken

[billyrom]

Did you try to unplug your ac adapter from ac outlet and then plug it back in?

[GomJabbar]

While I might be wrong, I think your impatience got the best of you. You should have never stopped the program until the battery recharged. There are warnings against disconnecting the AC power during the reconditioning process. Sometimes program completion timers (speaking generally here) are not very accurate.

[Ken Fox]

Did you try to unplug your ac adapter from ac outlet and then plug it back in?

Multiple times

[Ken Fox]

While I might be wrong, I think your impatience got the best of you. You should have never stopped the program until the battery recharged. There are warnings against disconnecting the AC power during the reconditioning process. Sometimes program completion timers (speaking generally here) are not very accurate.

I don't see how that could be true. When I went to sleep the maximizer program told me it would take 2 more hours to finish the reconditioning process. It was almost 1am and I went to sleep, leaving it on. When I awoke, the machine was off, plugged in, and not charging. I booted it up and there were warning messages about how I needed to plug it in or I would lose data, but it was already plugged in. It was on for about 5 minutes during which the 2 minutes of remaining battery time went down to 1 minute and then stayed there. That was when I hit the thing to stop reconditioning.

Multiple unpluggings of AC adapter and removal of battery have done nothing, although now the machine has been unplugged with the battery out for about 4 hours; haven't tried it again yet.

If this were a desktop, I'd unplug everything, remove the CMOS battery, short the jumper pins, reboot and load factory defaults in the bios. With a notebook I'm not at all sure that this is the right way to go. The machine still has about 16 or 18 months of warranty left but of course the battery is now more than a year old and is out of warranty. I have a second battery, a 9 cell, which hasn't been used in months, also an ultra bay battery also not used in months.

I'm going to try to put the battery in again and charge it if it will charge. If not, I'll try the other batteries. At this point I can't think of much else to do other than to call the tech line if these things don't work.

ken

[pianowizard]

Sounds scary. Thank goodness I have never tried reconditioning. I seldom use my laptops on battery, and I just leave the batteries in the laptops all the time, fully charged the whole time. Even after 2 to 3 years, they are still almost as healthy as when they were new.

[Ken Fox]

Sounds scary. Thank goodness I have never tried reconditioning. I seldom use my laptops on battery, and I just leave the batteries in the laptops all the time, fully charged the whole time. Even after 2 to 3 years, they are still almost as healthy as when they were new.

The plot thickens, and the I think the problem is solved.

I put the battery back in the T42, plugged the adapter cord back into the laptop, and still, nothing. Then I took the T42 to where I have the X32 parked, and swapped chargers (the X32 in my house is plugged into a standard 72 watt charger, not the mini 56watt ultraportable charger which is not designed for a T series laptop). The yellow battery light in the T42 started flashing. I then plugged the X32 into the the charger I've been using for the T42 (one of those huge AC/DC chargers that can also work in a car; I do not recommend this thing as it is ENORMOUS, too big and heavy for travel, but ok in the house) and the X32 wasn't charging.

So I looked at the big AC/DC charger and the green light on the brick was not lit even though it is plugged into a UPS. So, I unplugged THE CHARGER from the UPS, waited 5 seconds, plugged it back in. The green light on the brick lit.

Now, the AC/DC charger works again, on both laptops, and the T42 is recharging.

The battery reconditioning program is setup to function with the laptop PLUGGED into the AC adapter; it discharges the battery while the laptop is plugged in. How it does this I am not smart enough to know

Something about this process causes (or at least caused) my AC/DC travel charger to reset or tripped some sort of resettable safety switch in the charger itself.

I think all will be back to normal shortly.

I want to go back to my earlier questions; does anyone know the differences between these different FRU-numbered 6 and 9 cell T4x series batteries, if they are significant, if these batteries are interchangeable, and if there is an issue about shelf life in uncharged older Lithium ion T4x batteries that would cause one to reject buying unused, but new-old stock batteries?

Best,

ken

[christopher_wolf]

I don't see how that could be true. When I went to sleep the maximizer program told me it would take 2 more hours to finish the reconditioning process. It was almost 1am and I went to sleep, leaving it on. When I awoke, the machine was off, plugged in, and not charging.

Well,indeed, it isn't true. When it says it has two more hours to go and, when you wake up, I assume significantly after 3:00AM when it *should have* finished, and the machine is off...then that is not part of the standard recalibration process and something either interrupted it or there was a hard crash and you didn't get impatient; I haven't seen it delay for more than a minute or so off any time estimates. It is quite possible that there are idle times that were set, by default, to turn the system off at some point either on AC line or battery power after a given period of inactivity; that could have interrupted the process in such a way that when you booted back up, you were greeted with messages about how you would need it to plug in or you would lose data. Such messages come up when you either resume from a low battery state or upon resume on a fully charged battery after you suspended/hibernated at low battery warning, charged up, then resumed. Otherwise, the only thing that I think could have done it would be a crash of some sort.

I would say all the hardware is fine and, barring the system rejecting both the battery and the AC adapter, you should plug them back in and let the battery charge offline.

With regards to the batteries, I have seen only minimal differences. Usually, these would be with older BIOS and EC revisions and would manifest in things like incorrect charge thresholds, blank screen and indicator lights upon resume from suspend when the machine had been charging offline overnight, or the recalibration not detecting that the battery needs to be recalibrated. I have used several of the older FRUs and the latest FRUs in my T43 and have noticed only minor differences, aside from charge capacity and cycle count, between the newer ones and the older ones.

[GomJabbar]

I don't see how that could be true. When I went to sleep the maximizer program told me it would take 2 more hours to finish the reconditioning process. It was almost 1am and I went to sleep, leaving it on. When I awoke, the machine was off, plugged in, and not charging.

That's not what you seemed to be saying in your opening post: "When I went back to it this morning, it showed 2 minutes remaining in the cycle and the battery discharged to 1 or 2 percent. I waited several minutes and nothing changed." This seemed to indicate that it was still on.

If in the morning you came back to your T42 and it was off, plugged in, and not charging, then I think your battery just died through no fault of your own. I believe reconditioning is hard on a battery, and sometimes the battery does not survive it. There have been a couple of others that have posted similar experiences in the past.

FTR, I also have a T42, and I have performed one recondioning since I bought it. This reconditioning was done on Sept. 9, 2006. I bought the T42; Jan. 13, 2005, and began using it; Jan. 20, 2005. The time frame is not much different than yours.

EDIT: I see while I was composing this that the problem has been resolved. Good news.

[Ken Fox]

I don't see how that could be true. When I went to sleep the maximizer program told me it would take 2 more hours to finish the reconditioning process. It was almost 1am and I went to sleep, leaving it on. When I awoke, the machine was off, plugged in, and not charging.

Yeah, I left that part out partially because I thought it was unimportant and partially because I was rushed when I typed the post.

My own interpretation (now, after more thought) is that whatever the reconditioning did, it caused the AC adapter brick to stop functioning temporarily. As a result, after the battery had completely or nearly completely discharged, the machine shut down, either through hibernation (something I never do intentionally) or it just ran out of juice and died. Sometimes batteries recover a little when left alone for a few hours and presumably this happened, with it having about 2% of the charge left in it several hours later when I rebooted it.

But then, the 2% juice ran out about the time I closed down windows. The charger was still not functioning, so there was no juice coming out and when I unplugged and replugged the adapter pin back into the laptop it had predictably no effect because there was no juice coming out of it, and going into the laptop.

I think that if I try this again in the future I'll just leave the laptop on and let it run out of juice on its own, unplugged from the adapter.

ken

EDIT: presumably the reconditioning process assumes that there is juice coming out of the adapter and that it can be used after the battery power has been discharged. IF this is not the case, then the process stalls because there is no juice left to recharge the laptop with. The AC/DC adapter I have is intended for use on 120/240v AC, for use in automobiles with 12v sockets, and for use in airplanes with those (probably now old) Empower sockets. The power brick is much larger and heavier than your typical T4x/X3x adapter. There may be additional circuitry in this monstrous adapter that makes it incompatible for use in the "reconditioning" process.

[giasoldacastlar]

I own a T42 since september 2004 and I went through one battery reconditioning in november this year (see this post http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=). The battery reconditioning process stopped also for me, but the battery was already 100% charged. Your experience make me wonder if my AC adapter works properly. It used to produce a weird buzz months ago ...

I used to own a HP XE3 laptop and in that case the reconditioning process simply killed the battery of the laptop. I realized later that it likely was because when I started the process the battery was already low in charge. In the attempt to get back the battery at the time I opened it and checked if I could do something for it. But LiIon battery have usually a small 8 bits microprocessor monitoring over the battery. The only solution would have been to have an eeprom writer at hand.

About your question on buying old batteries, here
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
and here
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp
it is reported that you should not buy old batteries even if they were never charged. I recently bought a two years old never used battery for my T42 and it now works fine, but I will not blame anybody except me if in a couple of years or less it will show a marked capacity decrease ...

[Ken Fox]

About your question on buying old batteries, here
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
and here
http://www.buchmann.ca/Chap10-page6.asp
it is reported that you should not buy old batteries even if they were never charged. I recently bought a two years old never used battery for my T42 and it now works fine, but I will not blame anybody except me if in a couple of years or less it will show a marked capacity decrease ...

I am very skeptical about unsupported statements such as seen in those two links (which appear to be from the same source as the wording is nearly identical). I have yet to read any evidence from any source that a 3 year old lithium battery that is not being used, purchased for 1/3 of the current retail, would be a bad buy, especially if price/value relationship is considered.

[pianowizard]

I have yet to read any evidence from any source that a 3 year old lithium battery that is not being used, purchased for 1/3 of the current retail, would be a bad buy, especially if price/value relationship is considered.

I haven't read the articles that you cited but I agree with what you're saying. Unless these older batteries had a tendency to explode, I wouldn't mind if they lose even up to 50% of its design charge capacity, because I would still be saving money.

[giasoldacastlar]

I agree with both of you and, in fact, as I wrote I bough a "two years on a shelf" battery from ebay for much cheaper than a fresher one.

I got one of the links from this forum
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=234941
and what's in there seems reasonable enough to me.