Thinkpads Forum

Yesterday night I was using my SL400 on battery power and all of a sudden it just powered off. I thought the battery may have discharged without any warning and I went to sleep.

Today I woke up and I am shocked to know that I need the power adapter to be plugged in, even for laptop to start. It does not work on battery at all. Even the battery indicator LED does not glow. It just blinks once when the power cord is plugged in and does not glow when the laptop is working (on adapter). Crux of the issue is that my laptop has turned into a desktop and I need to keep it connected to power outlet to use it.

Salt on the wound is that the warranty has expired 2 days back.

I need help in knowing whether the issue is because of battery itself or the charging circuit has gone bad or may be something else?

Thanks.

What does it say about your battery in Power Manager? Like the cycle count and the remaining wattage. If can find an extra battery, that'd be a good way to test it.

Thanks Fred.

I am looking at the Power Options in Control Panel in Windows XP. Here, it is detecting the battery and shows the Total Battery Power Remaining to be 53%. The system gets to know when I take the battery out, then it shows "Unknown" or something like that. So, that means system is detecting the battery.

A friend of mine has a similar laptop and he will be here in a few hours, will try replacing the battery with his and report back.

By the way, is it just a co-incidence or something else. My laptop's warranty expired on August 05, 2010 and this issue came up on the night of August 06, 2010. May be these guys put some timer or something? Till yesterday it did not give any issues at all.

TheTourist wrote:By the way, is it just a co-incidence or something else. My laptop's warranty expired on August 05, 2010 and this issue came up on the night of August 06, 2010. May be these guys put some timer or something? Till yesterday it did not give any issues at all.

Me thinks you been watching too many movies. Honestly, after the first year the battery can go at any time. Perhaps you were just unlucky, at least with laptop batteries.

I did not know the batteries could die all of a sudden.

However, I will try replacing the battery with battery from another laptop to be sure that the issue is with the battery and not something else.

Yes, it is the battery. Tried replacing the battery from another laptop and it works fine. Thanks Fred.

Got a new battery, made by Sanyo.

In the Power Manager, the Cycle Count is 0. Can someone tell how the cycle count is counted and for how many cycles does a 6 cell battery generally last? My laptop's last battery lasted 551 cycles. Is that just about average?

TheTourist wrote:Got a new battery, made by Sanyo.

In the Power Manager, the Cycle Count is 0. Can someone tell how the cycle count is counted and for how many cycles does a 6 cell battery generally last? My laptop's last battery lasted 551 cycles. Is that just about average?

I think it's just pure luck. Some batteries last a really long time while other crap out quickly.