Thinkpads Forum

ThinkPad T520, Win7 Pro 64.

TVSU updates Power Manager to V. 6.38. Immediately on reboot notification area shows 0% power and a message stating that a battery error has occurred. The battery LED is now blinking orange and the battery will not charge. Considering that the battery was fully charged and had only 31 cycles on it (although it dates to October 2011) I can only assume that the software has killed the battery. Again, prior to the update there were no indications that the battery was malfunctioning or even losing capacity.

Uninstalling Power Manager did not help. Re-installing Power Manager did not help.

Is there a way to reset the battery? Am I locked in to buying a Lenovo battery to avoid task bar notifications of a non-genuine battery? Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Here in Mexico these batteries are very, very expensive.

I doubt it was the software, it may be just a coincidence. Batteries are controlled by an internal chip which is independent of the host machine and the power manager just reads what the battery is doing. If it failed it may be because it shorted out. It may happen if you allowed the battery to fully discharge at some moment. Lithium ion batteries are very sensitive to overdischarge, it starts to corrode the electrodes and release copper into the mixture, causing the shorts. And this is independent on how "new" the battery is.

I don't know of any way to disable the warnings about compatible batteries in the power manager, I guess you'll have to live with them if you want to buy a cheap Chinese battery. I'm not sure about the quality of such batteries, however, I tend to believe that quality varies a lot from brand to brand.

Indeed, original batteries are very expensive here.