X40 shuts itself off, then remains like dead.

[karol]

Hello everybody,
I am new to this forum.
We have 2 working thinkpads in our home: one X31 (Ubuntu 9.04) and one X40 (WXP pro).
The X40 is presently showing a strange behavior: After working for about one hour on a fully charged battery (standard battery), it suddenly shuts itself off without any warning (while the battery gauge indicates about 40 p.cent remaining charge), and then remains totally dead (when connecting the AC plug, no LED lights up, nothing happens).
The only way to take it back to life it is to apply the following procedure:
- Disconnect AC plug, disconnect battery.
- Depress power button and keep it depressed for at least 3 minutes.
- Then connect battery and AC plug.
- Press power button. Then only it will start up.
Strange procedure, but it works.
I am happy that I can recover my Thinkpad, but all this is very inconvenient for every day work.
Looks like a problem in some power management circuit in the Thinkpad, or maybe in some sensing circuit in the battery.
Has anyone experienced the same problem?
Has anyone an idea about what could be done to solve it?
Thanks in advance!
Karol

[Harryc]

Any time I've seen the phenomena where there is remaining charge in the battery and then it jumps to zero, it has been a bad cell or cells in the battery.

[karol]

Thanks Harry for your fast reply.
So it may be that the Thinkpad is OK, and the the battery (although recently purchased) is junk.
If so, I would expect the TP to restart normally when the AC plug is re-connected, which is not the case. It stays "dead" until the strange procedure is applied.
I am still looking for a way to return this machine to a normal state.
Thanks anyway,
K.

[virge]

Thanks Harry for your fast reply.
So it may be that the Thinkpad is OK, and the the battery (although recently purchased) is junk.
If so, I would expect the TP to restart normally when the AC plug is re-connected, which is not the case. It stays "dead" until the strange procedure is applied.
I am still looking for a way to return this machine to a normal state.
Thanks anyway,
K.

I had a very poor battery (10 minute run time) battery in my docked T42P. It was intended as a cheap backup should the power go out while I was working on a document. The battery slowly lost charge (and wouldn't charge up) and when it died, my T42P shut down even though it was still plugged in. Took a bit of unplugging and replugging in power supplies and good batteries before it started working again. It only happened once since I immediately got rid of that battery. I'm not sure what if any of my actions helped revive it, but it just goes to show that strange things happen with bad batteries.

[deckoff]

Dead cell. Had it round here, same behaviour.

To sum it up:
1) Your battery is gone , has a dead cell
2) When my battery used to go from 40% to zero, I have this behaviour, too , had to dis-connect and re-connect the battery, and had to press for a long time the power button..
Changing the battery should solve the problem
x40 2371 H89