T42 - Reconditioning the Battery - does not run

[Frolin]

Been awhile since I did the condition utility on my ThinkPag T42, and the battery seems to hold less of a charge in recent months. I also have the optional CD drive bay battery pack, the extra battery they looks like a CD/DVD drive and goes in that bay. And it seems to hold even less of a charge.

Had tried to run the 'Recondition Battery' option and each time I click button to start the process, nothing happens. Have cold booted the PC and tried on different days, closed all apps, have AC plugged in, just seems it does not start. It does change the button from "recondition battery" to "Stop Battery Reconditioning", but there are no signs it runs. Including if you look in Task Mgr.

Any idea why this utility does not start?


Frolin

[netzspannung]

If it does not work at all, you may try reinstalling/updating the power manager software. If this does not help, then the battery itself is at fault.

BUT, and that is a big but.. Do a search here on battry reconditioning and you will find that this procedure is very unlikely to do good to your battery. It most likely will SHORTEN the useful lifespan of your battery in favor of a more accurate % measurement. It cannot recondition the battery cells, it only deals with the battery meter and sets 0% and 100% threshold. A similar recalibration occurs in normal use when you do a full cycle (charge-discharge-recharge).

I did that a couple of times with a very tired battery and almost killed it completely.

PS. More, I can tell you that I later did a re-cell of that battery, and it was not a success. It worked for a month, then died. The battery recell is a thing made complicated by electronic circuits inside the batt, AND the fact that all the batteries come from different subcontractors. I remember the repairman telling me that SONY ones cannot have their controller reset, and Sanyo can be done easily - his problem was he used shyte cheap cells for replacement

[Frolin]

Thanks but I recently installed a new hard drive, which means a free install of Windows XP and the IBM software (have the IBM ThinkPad build CDs), so while doubt it's the software, do question some drivers I might have disabled.

Have read the various posts on "don't do it" and it is interesting, where IBM provides the software to do it and many users say don't. Wondering if the software is from a day before the modern Li Ion batteries?

Either way, still curious why the software does not start/work. Once I hit the <recondition> the button changes to <cancel> but thats it. As I recall, you used to get some screen showing it doing stuff?

Frolin

[Bruce Guttman]

All I got was a screen telling me what it planned to do, telling me to make sure the computer was plugged into an AC adapter, and then telling me it was working and not to shut anything off. It stayed this way for 36 hours before I got impatient and shut it down.

Right now I'm in a manual discharge. The thing was supposed to shut down in one minute -- an hour and a half ago!

[AbsolutXTR]

Don't discharge too much... I remember I once ran my battery down until my computer shut off completely (i.e. I selected the "All Shut-off Timers Off" power scheme and made sure Windows settings did not sleep/hibernate the laptop.

I then read that while discharging to 5-10% and then charging fully may help a little (probably more due to more accurate power meter as mentioned), FULLY discharging as explained above is NOT recommended. Something to do with the chemistry of the cells inside. If you FULLY discharge a cell, something changes inside and it can NOT take any charge anymore.

I bought a decent 9-cell battery on ebay from China. Not original so it comes with risks, but it costs me around 50-60 bucks with shipping and I've been getting good, long use out of it. Maybe that's a good option for you?