Thinkpads Forum

Hi all, been having some trouble with charging on my T440s. I was noticing some problems with the original charger I got with the laptop (intermittent starting and stopping, like a loose connection), and then it just up and quit. No amount of jiggling and plugging and unplugging would get the thing to work. So I got a new (original Lenovo) charger from amazon.

Now whenever I plug it in to charge, it starts and stops charging every few seconds. This can happen as few as 10-12 times or (like last night) more than 30 times (best guess). This is while the laptop, charger and cables are all completely still. Eventually it settles down and charges normally with no jiggling or adjusting of cables whatsoever. I'm pretty sure it's not good for the battery to start and stop charging rapidly like this, so if there's a way to fix it, I'm all ears. Running Windows 10 Pro 64 bit. Thanks for the help.

My best guess would be that Windows 10 is the culprit.
It doesn't like the Lenovo Power Management.
Uninstall it, and see if that helps.

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately that didn't help.

EDIT: ok, figured out the problem: my AC adapter is screwy. I just tried charging with a friend's charger (we happen to have similar laptops) and it worked just fine. Something must be up with the new adapter I got, grrr... It's really weird - if I put my ear up to the charging block, I can hear a faint hum which buzzes briefly every now and then. Whenever it buzzes, I can see the charging blip on my laptop.

Then that charger is most likely a Chinese knock-off.
Weigh your original one, and weigh the Amazon one on an accurate (electronic kitchen-)scale.
If the latter is lighter, it's definitely NOT genuine.

Well, I don't have access to a scale so I can't say. Kind of a bummer either way - I sort of need my laptop for life in general haha. It was about $20 on Amazon, perhaps that's in the range of "too cheap to be true." Looks like they're $50+ straight from Lenovo, yikes.

EDIT: after substantial researching, looks like the one I got is a fake. The biggest giveaway is the lack of barcode anywhere on the charging brick: both my old (genuine) charger and my friend's (genuine) charger have barcodes, and this one doesn't. There are probably lots of other ways to tell, but this seemed most immediately obvious.