Thinkpads Forum

There are other threads on battery "failure", but I didn't see anyone talking about sudden death of a perfectly good battery at an apparently artificial threshold.

I have a 9-cell and a 6-cell for the x200s. I usually use the 9-cell as that thing runs all day long without visiting the mains. So, I was out last night, used the laptop for the first time in a few weeks, battery was dead. Okay, fine. Plug it in, starts taking a charge. Unplug and walk around a bit after half hour partial charge, no issues, put it back on the mains. Okay, fine. Get back to hotel, let it charge fully overnight.

Wake up this morning to a flashing orange battery light. Unplug cord - pop! no juice. WUT? Open power manager, and it's got some "battery has failed due to normal wear" crap. Says charged to 100% though. Still reports 79.83 Wh capacity of a 84.24 Wh design capacity. Oddly, I have EXACTLY 300 cycles. Self-destruct scam?

The battery has been holding a charge like it's still new. No perceived loss in runtime. Just... suddenly decided to kill itself? No signs of swelling.

Is there some way to reset this?

(This post is about the 9-cell, in case it's unclear. The 6-cell has 275 cycles and is working fine, other than some reduced capacity 45.54/56.16 Wh, and apparently 25 cycles before its extortion-switch fires).

thekev wrote:There are other threads on battery "failure", but I didn't see anyone talking about sudden death of a perfectly good battery at an apparently artificial threshold.

Oddly, I have EXACTLY 300 cycles. Self-destruct scam?

The battery has been holding a charge like it's still new. No perceived loss in runtime. Just... suddenly decided to kill itself? No signs of swelling.

Is there some way to reset this?

There are many variables, that impact a batteries run times, as well as overall battery life. In addition just because it seems fine one day and dies the next, is not unusual for today's laptop batteries. You don't mention it's age. From the moment the battery is manufactured, even if not being used, it slowly begins to degrade.

Noticing where you live, heat also comes to mind. If the laptop was left inside the car, or in the trunk on a day that is only 80 degrees the inside of the car will climb to well over 110 degrees or hotter in only 20 minutes. On a 90 day it can climb to 150 to 160 degrees ambient temp inside the car. Just one exposure to those kinds of temps will take a toll on your battery.

I live in CA, the temps here get quite warm in the summer (well over 100) thus I choose to carry my laptop with me whenever I park the car, since mine goes to work with me everyday.

There is no "self destruct scam" Lenovo uses very high grade batteries.

But they must be used properly, not left plugged into the mains constantly and not left for weeks fully charged or at less that 10%. If you are going to store it which means leave it unused for over a week, it's a good idea to be sure the battery is at approx 50% charge and remove it. This is largely the reason all laptop mfgs only allow a 1 year warranty on their batteries.

Therefore if your's is over one year old your warranty has expired. If not call Lenovo and see what they have to say.

So I get back to the hotel tonight, and now the 6-cell has also decided to die after getting a full charge. 276 cycles on this one. Both batteries are from the initial purchase in late 2008, with Sanyo cells. On my older thinkpads (old like T21), and every other laptop I've ever had, the batteries just degrade in their capacity to hold a charge until they're useless. The "scam" here is that these batteries still have function left in them. They just choose to no longer give me any juice.

These were not left in heat or other extreme environments, but they have been idle and fully drained for a few weeks. Even longer for the 6 cell. It's probably not seen any use for months.

BTW, to avoid unnecessary cycles for short trips away from the wall socket, I had it set to not start charging until 95%.

The batteries have declared they're dead. How can I reset their EEPROM, or at least find out the REAL cause why they chose to declare themselves dead? I'm sure they're not dead, and even if they're worn, they shouldn't just suddenly shut themselves down, both in the same day.

thekev wrote:I'm sure they're not dead.......

For Lithium Ion batteries, a service life of close on 3 years with 275 or more cycles is an excellent performance result.

bill bolton wrote:For Lithium Ion batteries, a service life of close on 3 years with 275 or more cycles is an excellent performance result.

That's not really the point. They have reduced capacity, and admittedly they haven't been treated ideally (whose have?). They just decided to refuse to operate one day, instead of die slowly. There has to be a way around this.

I had a similar experience not long ago (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=98023).

If you want to tinker around, you can surely do so.

Depending on your time cost and equipment you have, getting a new one is probably a cheaper solution though.

AFAIK, there's no simple way to fix this kind of issues.

I would be happy to be proved wrong. : )

Cheers.

thekev wrote:That's not really the point.

Its entirely the point.

Lithium Ion batteries have many possible failure modes including the type you described. Your batteries were effectively at end of life by any reasonable measure, so it matters not one jot what the particular failure mode was.

People often don't differentiate between something that can be reasonably expected to fail and something that must fail.

There is no circuitry built into the batteries that causes them to die at exact times / cycle numbers. At least I haven't heard of anything like it to suspect a "scam".

Then again, I have batteries that are over 5 years old and over 300 cycles, and still operate just fine.

Panasonic batteries generally fare much better over time than Sanyo batteries.

But even Panasonics can have sudden death failures. We have a thread discussing such a case somewhere nearby.

To store batteries in a fully drained state for long periods of time is not a good idea. Lithium-ion batteries die if they get deep discharged.

A user had stored her notebook's battery outside the notebook for a long time, it had become depleted. When i installed it in the notebook again, it wouldn't take any charge at all. I supposed it had become deep discharged and thus died. However, by mistake i left it in the notebook - with the AC adapter connected. After a week, i happened to look at the charge indicator - it showed 100%. The battery had come to life again, just through sitting in the notebook for a week.