novice w/ 2 wk old Z61T- power/battery issue- *UPDATE*

[jmango]

Well, 2 weeks or so ago I was forced to make a rush purchase on a laptop, and decided on a Z61t (9442-89U), with plans to upgrade the specs later. A day after i received it I left for study abroad, so now I am in uganda with this thing and it is causing me trouble. (first thinkpad, btw, and i know zilch about computers)

The laptop came with a 4cell battery, and i ordered a 7 cell in addition. (all ordered from pcconnection, in case it matters)
When the laptop arrived i attached the 7 cell, charged it overnight (it only showed an 85% or so charge the next morning, but i was moving around the house with it a lot trying to install things before leaving.) id say i have had the laptop plugged in 80% of the time since receipt. It is only unplugged while on if i am moving from one spot in the house to another, and while i was in airports during travel.

here is the problem:

-it has been two weeks and at this point (after steadily decreasing in percentage) the 7 cell reads 11% and will not charge at all. in any case, if the computer is plugged in, the battery reading does not decrease further, but it does not increase at all. (also, the highest i have ever seen the battery read is 89%)

-i had not used the 4 cell at all (even for initial charge upon receipt) until yesterday. upon attaching, the battery read 5% charge, and after leaving it plugged in overnight, it now reads 6%. (and tells me that it will take 48hrs to fully charge?!?)

what i have done so far:

- i checked the battery info in power manager for both batteries and it says both are in "good condition"

-I used this (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67765) even though i have not received any error messages, to see if the 7 cell has the error that lenovo says qualifies for replacement- no go. (haven't checked the 4 cell)

-(probably not related but it didn't want to leave it out)when i got here the campus it guys took off norton and installed mcaffe virusscan(they dont trust norton), and they said that i had a ton of viruses on my computer (i wk old at that point) which they cleaned. after this, my computer would not shutdown, restart, or come out of standby or hibernation without me powering off manually. i fixed this yesterday by taking advice from this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... management

i dont want to take it back to the IT guys here b/c they are sort of numbskulls(hearsay), I have yet to contact lenovo- i wanted to post here first. any and all advice is welcome!


(meanwhile....my uncle and cousin who are in admin at the university, are laughing at me with their macbook pros........sigh....)

[jkahng]

re: battery
try this. under power manager => battery information tab => battery maintance button.
there is a setting for when the battery will start charging, i set mine for 50%. the battery will charge only when the charge level is below 50%. set it to 95% and see if the battery will charge. a restart might be involved
Also try resetting the battery gauge (same window)

If the above doen't work for you. It might be a hardware problem and you would need to send it for a/s.


re: antivirus
Once a computer is infected, there's no telling in how much the damage is and if antivirus software has fully recovered the damage done. the only way to be sure is a clean install ( use the recovery partion ) and start from scratch.

FYI, I use two anti virus software( AVG and Virobot ) along with various anti spyware.

tip : if you haven't made the recovery disks yet. do so now.

[jmango]

Just an update for those who find they have the same problem I did:

-So from the original post until this month the problem steadily got worse, when i arrived home the battery never read higher than 5% charge- it discharged SEVERAL times, then randomly would start charging up to around 5% then stop- very strange

-I emailed IBM (europe) from where I was but they said because of the warranty on my computer that I needed to call (?) which was inconvinient from where I was.

-arrived in US last week, Called IBM last weekend, told them the problem, they sent me a box through DHL. I sent the computer to them on Monday, I got it back today (thursday). The repair report says all they did was update the BIOS. the battery seems to be charging now (20% the moment)!! Hopefully it will fully charge and be able to hold charge- i will know more in the next few days.

-I do find it strange that they didn't just tell me to update the bios over the phone? (I know nothing about computers, so i would have had to be walked through it- but seems simple enough- i guess they wanted to cover all of their bases? There are electricity surges everyday in Uganda so i thought it may have somehow fried something)

hth someone out!

[cj3209]

I have used powerbooks in the past and currently use a z61t as well as a T60p.

You may want to run System Update on your notebook and see if you need to run any updates to the power manager. Also, I would suggest you run the battery gauge reset and let it run all night.

As to your relatives laughing at you with their macbook pros, don't worry about it - apple is having enough trouble with leopard as it is.

But I digress and have no intention of starting a flame war...


CJ