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Irreparable Battery Damage, but Lenovo Tools Says No

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 6:59 am
by cxls
I work in an IS department, and we have one user with a T60 who got the "Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one," but the tool available here says that the battery is not eligible for a replacement. What is the next step from here?

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:00 am
by Harryc
The battery should be under warranty for a year. Contact Lenovo maintenance if the machine is less than a year old. Lenovo is giving an additional 6 months warranty for batteries failing like this as well, so even if it is 1.5 years old it may be replaced by them -

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 67765.html

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:45 am
by cxls
The battery's FRU is actually listed on the replacement page, so I'm surprised the tool doesn't correctly show that it should be eligible. They are less than a year old.

Anyway, we will be contacting our Lenovo rep.

Re: Irreparable Battery Damage, but Lenovo Tools Says No

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 2:53 pm
by Anthony S
cxls wrote:...a T60 who got the "Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one."
I had a 10 month-old battery that caused this message. I also had messages from the Message Center, which puzzled me a bit. Anyway, the battery was definitely dead and Lenovo replaced it immediately.

Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:40 pm
by gunston
what is the phenomenon of Failed Battery.
unable to charge or battery life decay extremely fast.?

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 1:38 am
by ronan_zj
9. The Battery Verification Tool said I did not qualify for a replacement battery. Why not?
A. In order to qualify for a replacement battery you must meet the following criteria:

The battery must have already failed due to the Irreparable Damage error.
The battery FRU part number must be on the list support by the extended warranty shown in the model/part list on this page.
The age of the battery must be no more than 6 months past the expiration date of the battery warranty

8. Which ThinkPad models are affected by this problem?
A. Please note that only a very small percentage of the systems listed in the chart below will actually fail due to this problem.
ThinkPad model FRU part number
R60, R60e, T60, T60p: 92P1137, 42T5246

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:22 am
by _Jake_
Is the battery still functional?

Can you link a screen shot of power manager with the error?

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:23 pm
by carbon_unit
I have one of these now too. It has the irreparable damage error but the Lenovo tool says I am not eligible for as replacement.
That blows. :x

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 10:29 pm
by gator
carbon_unit wrote:I have one of these now too. It has the irreparable damage error but the Lenovo tool says I am not eligible for as replacement.
That blows. :x
Same here. This happened to me when I was in India, and I contacted Lenovo once I came back - sadly, no replacement even though I bought a warranty extention (apparently that does not cover batteries). I still haven't replaced the battery since I am using my T60 at home exclusively now ...

List of FRU part numbers of bad/dead batteries

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:02 pm
by henrikb
Let's start collecting statistics of bad FRU part numbers that reports "Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected" but are not listed/eligible for replacement. It might be that this is a common error to other FRU part number as well:

FRU part number, Manufacturer, Date, First used date, Serial #:

93P5030, Sony, 2007-05-07, 2007-05, 5346, dead 8-cell.


HOW TO FIND THIS:
Assuming MS Windows, start your ThinkVantage Power Manager (either via the StartMenu or the battery icon), and go to the 'Battery Information' tab. In the 'Battery details...' panel you should see the "FRU part number" in the right column.

INTERESTING:
I wonder what they base their list of eligible FRU part numbers on?!? Interestingly, one of their screenshots [http://tinyurl.com/5dzgeo] shows FRU part number 92P1131 as an example, but it is not listed as an eligible number.

MY CASE:
After approx 9-10 months, I got the first messages say
"Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected", but after restarting the Thinkpad X60 off, the error message went away. I think it took a few weeks before I saw it again. I figured that it will useless to send it to repair since 1) the battery seems to work, 2) Lenovo will probably just send it back because the errors were just one timers.

About two weeks ago, this is when the battery ~13 months old, the charge capacity seems to go down and last week I noticed that the last ~25-30% left of the battery (8-cell) when very quickly. Today, while working the laptop just shut down without any notice. Battery is completely dead! It does not charge and it just sits there with 26% charge which neither goes up nor down. When I pull the power cord, there is no power to the computer which just obviously dies - the battery is not providing anything.

I have tried to "reset" the battery, but that stops after a few seconds. There seems to be nothing to do. It's plain dead.

Unfortunately I've also got one of those batteries with the "wrong" FRU part number. But, let's start comparing numbers and see what we have, because it might be that we have to be enough with the same number in order to complain.

Cheers

Henrik