Thinkpads Forum

I am using a 3rd party battery currently but have swapped in an official Lenovo brand battery which can only hold about 10 minutes of charge and the same thing appears.

This has never happened to me before. I accidentally unplugged the AC cable from my 90W official Lenovo branded charger, and the laptop died. I plugged it back in and turned it back on to see this.

It appears to not be charging that battery, as Power Manager reports it has been at 3% since i turned the machine back on.

http://i.imgur.com/szLcatu.jpg

(I am aware of the small burn mark on the upper corner of my screen. That was an accident.)

Did you get that message with the Genuine Lenovo battery or the aftermarket? You should not get it with the genuine battery.

I would Shut it down, remove battery and AC adapter and then press and Hold the power button for 10-15 seconds. Then put the GENUINE battery and AC adapter back on and power it up.

Then check power manager. If you don't have it, DL and install it.

As long as your battery light is not fast blinking orange, it Should charge. If it is fast blinking orange, the battery is toast.

If and when it charges, shut it down again and do the power dance above then put in the aftermarket battery.

Note that with T61s I have not had a problem with 3 different aftermarket batteries being rejected by the computer. The brands I have working here are Ubatteries (new from amazon), BTI (came with a used T61) and RoHS (again came with a used T61). Thee three charge and do Not give that error, but again on a T61. T420s might be more obstinate about genuine batteries.

No idea if these are any good or not, but the name Duracell got my attention: https://www.batteriesplus.com/battery/l ... nkpad-t420

Maybe you have one of these rotten Lenovo-flop-batteries: http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/lenov ... ery-recall

Your aftermarket battery might have damaged the charging circuit on the motherboard. I've seen that happen on several occasions.

The issue would have to be tested with a *known good*, properly tested genuine Lenovo battery that has been proven to properly behave in another system. If you have access to such an item, you'll know where you stand shortly.

Good luck.

I also had problems to charging my batteries on my T420...it started after I took the MS offer to upgrade to Win10 ...after that sometimes it would refuse to recharge my batteries. I have the extended and a slice battery. Looked on the net, tried all sorts of tricks but at the end of the day I could not get them charged. So I thought it had to do with Win10 so I reverted back to Win7...only to find the same problem existed. Flashed the latest official Bios and tried more tricks but the problem remained. If you cannot charge your battery and your laptop needs to be plugged in all the time we cannot longer talk about a laptop, its more like a desktop in need of a power supply?! I already have a desktop and sure don't need a second one!
Anyway, I became so fed-up with the thing that I came close of just dumping it in the bin...but having an mSATA SSD and a second SSD plus 3 batteries for it I decided to invest in a cheap replacement T420. After all the my old "defective" T was cosmetic wise in a very good shape. So I got a cheap T420 with a German keyboard, took the Main board and installed it in my old T420 case and voila, all is working as should. No hassle of recharging the batteries so I assume the old main board failed. My wife will be using it as I stick with my X220

Outrageous solution: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=103108
Optional: try booting from a Live Linux CD
Possibility: UNinstall Lenovo's Power Manager

And another one: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=80560