x61 tablet battery refusing to charge

[j_h_o]

I've got an x61 tablet here, with the battery refusing to charge all of a sudden. I was getting 3-4 hrs of battery life just last week. Today, when the machine was disconnected from AC, it simply shut off.

Power manager shows "A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery..."

The battery is running at 29C, has 139 cycles on it, and was manufacturered in 2007-07-27 (Sanyo).
The FRU (93P5032) is NOT under the current recall, so I was just wondering if anyone else was encountering this problem.

I'm on BIOS 1.16, but I can't flash the BIOS currently, with a non-functional battery pack.

Any other suggestions?

[bluemonk]

Mine just died under the exact same 'mysterious' circumstances. Same warning. Mine's a 9-cell with only 89 cycles. Updated to bios ver 1.22.

Something tells me this can't be a coincidence.

[iyogee]

I face exactly same problem. It is a perfectly fine battery - with an easy 4 hrs charge till I let it fully discharge (ONCE). Now it shows 100% charged, but amber warning LED blinks and (the same) error message is that it cannot be charged.

It seems a ltlle bizarre that even with all updated Lenovo power utilites installed the battery will die so abruptly, without any warning. I wonder why this particular FRU (93P5032) was left out of recall, because there are several users facing the same problem.

I wonder if there is anyway for service centers to (force) charge our dead appearing batteries to an acceptable level (by laptop chager). I would hate to throw away an usable battery because the charger thinks it is dead - what about our environmental responsibility?

(My unit is out of warranty, but I would think that it being in warrranty repairs for a good part of the first year of ownership shall be compensated by giving this unit some benefit of doubt.)

[treker]

This happened to me on my X61 in Vienna, Austria with no warning. Unfortunately, it meant a long filght home without video.
Then doing some research, I found this forum with the solution:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... d-p/147118

I hope this helps you out.

[tamasrepus]

My X61 Tablet battery (also an FRU 93P5032) died of the same symptoms last week.

My battery is long out of warranty, so I don't think there is anything I can do... the recall does NOT include our FRU, so we're screwed.