Thinkpads Forum

I'm having a strange problem with my 600E (2645-4au). I just bought a new battery which works just fine. The only problem is that the computer thinks it is empty. Every battery check program that I have tried shows 0% and charging with the A/C adaptor but it never goes above 0%.

I actually get a decent amount of time on the battery but I don't know when its going to die.

I've used BatteryMaximiser (ver 1.35 for the 600E) and a utility program called BATMON. Both show 0% and charging.

With the A/C adaptor, the orange light is solid indicating charging. Without it, the light blinks indicating that it needs a charge.

The BIOS is inet36WW.

I have a 30 day return policy on the battery but I have a hard time believing that the battery is bad. Could it be the battery or is the
problem somewhere else?

Thanks
Gordon

Well I'll answer my own question. I was able to get my hands on another 600 and battery and it turns out that the problem is in my new battery.

No matter which machine it is in, it shows no charge even though it has enogh power to run for over an hour. The battery that was in my borrowed machine showed the proper charge in both machines.

So the answer is that the process that shows the amount of power left is controlled by the battery itself. If a fully charged battery shows 0% left, the problem is with the battery, not the computer.

For the record, the IBM help desk said it was a software problem, my local computer repair shop said it was a motherboard problem and the members of this forum had no comment.

My guess is that there was a lack of response in this forum, because it is an odd situation. Normally, the battery either works or it doesn't.

Obviously, if you were getting the same results with it on another machine, then yes, it is the battery.

Was this battery new, used or reconditioned?

It was a new battery but not direct from IBM. I'm going to send it back for a replacement. Hopefully, it was just something defective in this one battery.

Thinkpad batteries are more than just battery cells in a plastic case; there is sophisticated circuitry inside. My guess is that atermarket battery manufacturers cut costs of the OEMs in part by not testing fully or perhaps including used or inferior parts inside. That maybe the reason the general concensus here is to shy away from aftermarket batteries.

This is a message type board, not a chat room so immediate responses are not always forthcoming. Yesterday I just received the first response to a question I posed a couple of weeks ago. There is a wide range of knowledge available here but not everyone has all that knowledge; folks generally have their areas of expertise, and lives of their own besides answering questions on demand at no charge. Often the forum the question is posted in can make a big difference as many folks don't read every post in every forum. Yours was certainly posted in the proper forum for the machine but it could have also been posted in the general hardware forum instead as battery issues are certainly general to all Thinkpads.

Hopefully your replacement battery will be better than the one you are returning.