Thinkpads Forum

Hi!

The problem is the battery doesn't want to charge at all. I have a blinking indicator under my monitor that shows battery is completely discharged. And my power manager says it's charged completely. I've left the battery for charging with the computer beeing turned off but nothing changed. The state of the battery is reported now as "idle".

This happened after I tried to run "Battery Rundown" function of IBMs "PC Doctor for DOS". I decided to do so because batteries capacity just jumped from about 70Wh to less than 30Wh several months ago. I am not a chemist but I still think the capacity can't change so dramatically because of the battery itself and it happend due to batterie's controller or smth. And so I googled a little and found some tips especially on ThinkWiki.

So what can one do with such a battery? Appreciate any help!

Battery stat:

First use date: 2007-09-01
Cycle count: 422
Design capacity: 74880
Remaining capacity: 22770
Model: 93P5030
Serial: 6335

A 3 year old battery with 422 cycle count...it's long overdue for replacement.

OK, I don't say it should work like a new one. But it doesn't charge at all!

I mean an old laptop that is 4 years older than my ThinkPad still can work for about an hour without power. Even though the battery it has is not an 8-cell one and it was used all the time.

What does the power manager say the current capacity is? If the battery has failed, power manager usually notifies you of that.

Ivan, it says the battery is fully charged and has 22,9Wh. The full capacity is reported to be 27,6 Wh. But like I said it's fully discharged and can't keep the computer working even for seconds.

I'm actually running Linux right now. Do you think I should try the native power manager for Windows?

P.S. It's nice to meet a guy with a russian nickname. ))

Mephistophilis wrote:Ivan, it says the battery is fully charged and has 22,9Wh. The full capacity is reported to be 27,6 Wh. But like I said it's fully discharged and can't keep the computer working even for seconds.

I'm actually running Linux right now. Do you think I should try the native power manager for Windows?

P.S. It's nice to meet a guy with a russian nickname. ))

If the battery doesn't charge, it has probably failed. One of the cells inside is shot, so it will no longer charge. It's possible to refurbish the battery, but the easier thing to do is to buy a new one.

Да, я русский

Thanks! Can one refurbish the battery without having to go to service center? )

В общем самому что-то ещё можно сделать? )))
Выбрасывать жаль, новую покупать дорого. Тем более в Украине. )

The statement that you can refurbish the battery is misleading. If the cells are bad they can be replaced, but you need specialized, expensive equipment to reset the electronics. The batteries can also explode. When you aer done, if you are lucky, you can end up with something like lhe cheap chinese refurbished batteries that work poorly and only for a short time

That's disappointing. Thank you for helping anyway!

I have a similar problem

I drained my battery today through normal use. And now all I have is a blinking orange indicator light. According to Ubuntu the battery is charged. A bit of sniffing around in the system coughed up this little list:

present: yes
design capacity: 74880 mWh
last full capacity: 69310 mWh
battery technology: rechargeable
design voltage: 14400 mV
design capacity warning: 3465 mWh
design capacity low: 200 mWh
cycle count: 0
capacity granularity 1: 1 mWh
capacity granularity 2: 1 mWh
model number: 93P5030
serial number: 5236
battery type: LION
OEM info: SONY

8-cell as you might have seen from the numbers. Cycle count is obviously wrong (It's had around 100-150 cycles by now at most). I'm writing this post with the AC attached, without it the system will give no response whatsoever although it will run without the battery present.

I don't get it, it worked just fine this morning, now it seems it's gone to meet it's maker.

If I might need to buy a new battery I would like to be positively sure that it's the battery, not my motherboard or something else that's not working. How do I make sure? I don't have a second battery to test with.


ps: It's an X61s

Just throw my experience. I have two batteries that got 0 cycles and will not take charge (status says charging). Now that I got a motherboard through warranty couples days ago, I tried the old batteries again. Still no luck.

Status: charging
Error message: A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged.
Status led: blinking orange
Charge cycle: 0 (definitely wrong)

So I guess the battery is basically dead or the logic board inside the battery is dead.

I had a similar problem on my old x61s.

The battery just would not charge when using Ubuntu. However, I booted back into the original Windows XP and discovered that I had the battery set to charge only when below 5%. I had this done from the utility provided by IBM.
After I changed that setting, booted back to Ubuntu and everything started working.

I hope this would prove helpful to anyone, even though not many people still use their x61s's in this time and age

All the best!

happythinkpad wrote:I had a similar problem on my old x61s.

The battery just would not charge when using Ubuntu. However, I booted back into the original Windows XP and discovered that I had the battery set to charge only when below 5%. I had this done from the utility provided by IBM.
After I changed that setting, booted back to Ubuntu and everything started working.

I hope this would prove helpful to anyone, even though not many people still use their x61s's in this time and age

All the best!

Which utility provided by IBM?

The battery of my x61s died yesterday.

It is actually called ¨Battery Utility¨ and it came installed by default in the ¨ThinkVantage¨ menu of the original Windows XP installation. I booted back into XP, opened the Battery utility and just erased all the limits I had set from there.
My battery now usually lasts for half an hour in Ubuntu.

Hope this helps!

Weighing in, as I am capable of some battery hardware and firmware hacking (I own some of the earlier mentioned 'specialized equipment' for hacking on smart batteries).

LiIon batteries, hardware and software, are super-paranoid about any out-of-spec conditions. Any overvoltage, undervoltage, or unexpected behavior will cause the firmware controller to permanently mark the battery 'failed' as well as intentionally blow hardware fuses that isolate the cells. This is partially because damaged cells will not only occasionally overheat/vent (ie, explode) when charging, but also when discharged. Candlepower forums has some nasty pictures of people who accidentally overcharged cells, and the cells didn't explode until they were used. So yeah, anything goes wrong, the battery quietl commits suicide and renders itself as inert as possible.

You can open up the battery and try to replace cells, but then the controller will do the same thing--- see something weird going on and electronically blow all the fuses. And those fuses are *really* annoying to find. I have to get them from random sellers in China, since they're purposely not available to the public.

The eight-cell X6X batteries use two banks of cells that are controlled and balanced separately (One ~2000mAH bank of rectangular cells, one ~2400mAH bank of can cells). If one bank fails, you'll suddenly see the reported capacity drop by half or more. And if one bank failed, the second is usually not far behind. Deep-discharging a battery on its last legs is often the straw that breaks the camel's back--- poof go the fuses.

I'll also add--- having been inside many of the cheap Chinese eBay batteries, I'd never buy one on purpose myself. The 'recycled' cells they use are often in horrific condition, and the assembly quality is anywhere from 'meh' to 'horrifying'. The cheaper the battery, the more likely it works purely by accident. If you're re-celling a battery properly, at least as a hobbyist buying retail, the new cells alone should cost most of what a new battery does anyway.

if you really want to know how and why a better failed, send it to me and I can try to dump/parse the nvflash state from the controller. The standard smart battery protocols don't really have a good way of reporting failures or reasons for failures, you need to get into vendor-specific queries, and the vendors don't publish any of the how-to.

Also Google "hoverboard fires" to see what can happen with cheap Li-Ion batteries.

OEM batteries are for cowards. Real thinkpadders die with aftermarket batteries exploding in their faces, bravely vading the waters of the unknown, like real men.

Reply with quote
OEM batteries are for cowards. Real thinkpadders die with aftermarket batteries exploding in their faces, bravely vading the waters of the unknown, like real men.

LOL

Yes the OEM batteries are sometimes going to cost you what your Laptop is probably worth. I have purchased aftermarket batteries before successfully but you do need to be wary.
The great thing about Thinkpads is the ThinkVantage Power Manager. You can set your battery to charge between thresholds of say 40% to 60 %.
This will prolong the life of that valuable battery as charging to 100% does stress the battery and shorten its lifespan.