Thinkpads Forum

Hey, guys! I hope that all is well! I'm in a bit of a pinch where my battery clicks when I'm charging. I took the battery out and powered it on with just the charger, works fine. When I have a battery in, it doesn't charge at all or it makes a clicking noise and flickers between on and off charging. I switched the battery, the same issue. I'm curious to know if it's the charger or a bad circuit at this point. Any thoughts?

Edit: Decided to dual boot into Ubuntu and lo and behold, the battery charges no problem. It might be a hardware issue (because I'm rocking 3 drives at the moment) since it gets fussy when the laptop is off. Any ideas?

Try this:
remove both battery and charger, then press the Power button and hold it down for ca. 20 seconds, this resets the laptop.
Now only plug in the charger and try to boot.
If OK, switch off, add the battery, try to boot again.
If battery now charges, you're good.
If not, repeat the above, but with the other battery.
If still no charging, both batteries could be bad, but more likely the charging circuit is gone.
A (used) SL400 mobo is cheap on eBay, or try a WTB in our Marketforum.

Have you also tried another charger?

RealBlackStuff wrote:Try this:
remove both battery and charger, then press the Power button and hold it down for ca. 20 seconds, this resets the laptop.
Now only plug in the charger and try to boot.
If OK, switch off, add the battery, try to boot again.
If battery now charges, you're good.
If not, repeat the above, but with the other battery.
If still no charging, both batteries could be bad, but more likely the charging circuit is gone.
A (used) SL400 mobo is cheap on eBay, or try a WTB in our Marketforum.

Have you also tried another charger?

Hey! Thanks for the quick response! I tried what you said on both batteries and got nothing. On Ubuntu, the battery halts at 87% and then the clicking starts again. As for a charger, I ordered one yesterday, so it should be here tomorrow. I'll bump the thread when I get it and hopefully it makes a difference. I notice that the brick I currently have gets pretty hot.

Update: Was sent the wrong charger, got a refund on that and got the one I wanted. Unfortunately, the charging circuit seems shot. I guess it's time to shop around for a new mobo, but it's still annoying to switch everything out haha For now, it's not dire since I'm usually parked somewhere with an outlet, but I rather be safe than sorry. Thanks for helping me troubleshoot!