Thinkpad T60 battery lockup/slowdown problem.
Posted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:51 pm
I recently acquired the following off of Craigslist:
T60 2623-KEU
Centrino Duo
3 GB RAM
80 GB HD
ATI graphics
Intel a/b/g wireless (I think)
It was cheap because the owner said he was having problems with it locking up. He even did a clean install of Windows XP on it from the recovery disks, but had no luck. He showed me how it would lock up on the Windows boot screen sometimes, other times it would get all the way to the desktop before locking. I figured I'd take a stab at rehabbing the machine.
Checked the BIOS, it was up to date and reset everything to defaults. The battery was shot, showed no signs of charging and the indicator light continually blinked orange. After a little bit of Googling, I found that there was an issue on some T60s where a bad battery would cause them to lock up. I removed the battery and did some tests on AC power only. After two days of use, not one lockup. I wiped Windows off the machine and replaced with my favorite Linux distro (Crunchbang). Running on AC, it's fantastic.
I have an R500 around with the original, Lenovo-brand, factory-installed battery in it. I figured I'd try it out in the T60. When the R500 battery is in the T60 and it's plugged into AC, it seems a little slower than when it runs with no battery at all, but when I remove it from AC, it slows down to the point where it is unusable. I did some more Googling but didn't find anything concrete regarding this specific behavior.
Any ideas? I'd understand if it did this with an off-market battery but that's not the case. It's a great machine, I'd like to fix it up. Thanks in advance for any advice.
T60 2623-KEU
Centrino Duo
3 GB RAM
80 GB HD
ATI graphics
Intel a/b/g wireless (I think)
It was cheap because the owner said he was having problems with it locking up. He even did a clean install of Windows XP on it from the recovery disks, but had no luck. He showed me how it would lock up on the Windows boot screen sometimes, other times it would get all the way to the desktop before locking. I figured I'd take a stab at rehabbing the machine.
Checked the BIOS, it was up to date and reset everything to defaults. The battery was shot, showed no signs of charging and the indicator light continually blinked orange. After a little bit of Googling, I found that there was an issue on some T60s where a bad battery would cause them to lock up. I removed the battery and did some tests on AC power only. After two days of use, not one lockup. I wiped Windows off the machine and replaced with my favorite Linux distro (Crunchbang). Running on AC, it's fantastic.
I have an R500 around with the original, Lenovo-brand, factory-installed battery in it. I figured I'd try it out in the T60. When the R500 battery is in the T60 and it's plugged into AC, it seems a little slower than when it runs with no battery at all, but when I remove it from AC, it slows down to the point where it is unusable. I did some more Googling but didn't find anything concrete regarding this specific behavior.
Any ideas? I'd understand if it did this with an off-market battery but that's not the case. It's a great machine, I'd like to fix it up. Thanks in advance for any advice.