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Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

P1/P40/P50/P70 Series
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Muse
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Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#1 Post by Muse » Sun Jan 10, 2021 9:16 am

I have a P1 Gen 1 and a new P1 Gen 3. Both machines run Win 10 Pro 64bit.

I use them with adapter connected and in order to extend battery life I have thresholds set up on the P1 Gen 1:

Max: 45%
Min: 40%

I had this setup on the P1 Gen 3, but about 2 days ago I take the machine out of suspend and see the battery's suddenly at 100%. Somehow the machine got reset to a condition where it didn't remember my previous settings (Enable, and the thresholds I'd set).

Now it seems that for whatever reason you cannot activate battery thresholds when the battery charge is above the stop charging threshold. I have no idea why. Anyway, I unplug after the spontaneous and unexplained forgetting of my thresholds, let the machine drift down to below 45% (which takes a long time), and just now try again to set the thresholds. The machine hadn't remembered my previous thresholds. So, I slide to Enable, I find that the drop downs to set Stop charging at and Start charging at do not respond. I'm wondering if I have to allow the machine to evaluate the battery capacities. I did that when I set up the machine, around 10 days ago, don't want to have to do that again so soon, seems absurd. Anyway, Lenovo Vantage does not indicate that I should or need to do that to set Thresholds. I was finally able to set the thresholds after enabling thresholds but a moment later the machine snapped back to DISABLE for the feature and forgot my thresholds. This is aggravating. There's no message that I have to do a "Battery gauge reset." I did a Battery gauge reset on 12/31/2020. I need to do another already? It doesn't so indicate, but that's all I can think. It's a PITA to do so, takes most of a day.

I thought, OK, call Lenovo, but it's Sunday and figured maybe I can get some sage help on this here.
"If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball eight miles wide." - A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

Dec. 2010: Now thought to be over 11 miles wide!

w0qj
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Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#2 Post by w0qj » Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:36 am

We actually used this feature this past weekend.
We encountered no such problems on our X1E1; battery charge threshold behaves as it should for us (we set it at max 65% battery level).
We almost always "sleep" our computer; we never use hibernate.

We are using X1E1 (X1 Extreme Gen 1) [20MF-CTO1WW] which is basically same hardware as your P1 Gen 1, albeit with consumer oriented GPU.

We have the latest version of Lenovo Vantage installed, and all Critical/Recommended ThinkPad software fully installed.
Win10 fully patched.
ie: everything is up to date.

Sorry, have no idea what is the issue with yours; perhaps Lenovo/ThinkPad support can check this out for you!

Good luck!
Daily Driver: (X1E3) X1 Extreme 3rd Gen | mobile broadband (WWAN)
Current Thinkpads: X1E3 | X1E1 | X1C10 | X1C9 | X1C4 | X1C3 | X230
Retired Thinkpads: X250 | T410 | T42 | 560 (circa 1996)

Muse
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Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:19 pm
Location: Berkeley, CA

Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#3 Post by Muse » Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:51 am

duplicate post
Last edited by Muse on Sun Jan 10, 2021 11:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
"If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball eight miles wide." - A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

Dec. 2010: Now thought to be over 11 miles wide!

Muse
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Location: Berkeley, CA

Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#4 Post by Muse » Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:54 am

AFAIK, the machine is completely up to date on everything. I made the setting (only way I know of) with Lenovo Vantage.

I'm using the machine right now. Vantage indicates that the Threshold feature is disabled. However, it's plugged into AC power (SlimQ 65w GAN charger, which the Thinkkpad always complains about as "Slow Charger" but it supplies enough charge to keep the charge state from dropping). The oddest thing is happening: The charge is remaining constant at 41% and has been so for around an hour. The charge should be increasing, but it's not.

Now, the Threshold feature (the way I've always set it) has always had the machine vary between 40% and 45% as one would expect (been using it for over a year on my P1 Gen 1, and lately on the P1 Gen 3 since a couple days ago when the machine mysteriously went to 100% charge and disabled Threshold setting). However, it's just sitting at 41% right now for the last hour, which it never did before. I'm thinking that Vantage uses registry settings and has set the max and min at 41%. Bad code in Vantage, yup!

I did some searching and came up with a thread on Thinkpad Threshold bugs from 2017 at forums.lenovo.com, where I've been registered since 2006 when I got my first Thinkpad. Couldn't login today, although I had my password in hand. I used the forgot password link to generate a new password but every time I try to access the forums I'm automatically sent to the configure profile page where I'm told that my user name or email (either) is already used! I see no recourse on the page to get out of the predicament. Nutty code at Lenovo's own forums. Unfortunate. They make high level equipment but the support appears to be less than mediocre, at least online. I've reached them on the phone (about a year ago). I don't expect that to be easy, but I see no recourse. It's Sunday, however, so it will have to wait.
"If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball eight miles wide." - A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

Dec. 2010: Now thought to be over 11 miles wide!

w0qj
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Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#5 Post by w0qj » Sun Jan 10, 2021 11:54 am

OK, here's an update (pun intended):

We just observed the same Battery Charging Threshold, exactly what you have observed, this time on our other ThinkPad X1E3 (X1 Extreme Gen 3) [20TK-CTO1WW].
We strongly suspect that a "newer version" of Lenovo Vantage is the issue.

ie: Under this "new" Lenovo Vantage (at least on our X1E3), one cannot set a "lower" Battery Charging Threshold than your current battery charge level.

ie: When our battery is at 100% on our X1E3, and we goto Lenovo Vantage's [Power] to try changing the Battery Charging Threshold,
Lenovo Vantage would not let me! The "65%" Battery Charging Threshold is greyed out.
ie: Apparently only when my battery level goes below the Battery Charging Threshold, then I can specify what higher Battery Charging Threshold would I wish to set.

We suspect Lenovo/ThinkPad will say that this is a new feature, and not a bug.

Perhaps Lenovo/ThinkPad support can check this out for you!

Good luck!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[X1E1_Update]:
Our X1E1 (X1 Extreme Gen 1) on the other hand:
a) We did update Lenovo Vantage a few days ago (it said updating Lenovo Vantage and we had to wait a few minutes).
b) Asking our X1E1 Lenovo Vantage to update just now yielded "no" new update for Lenovo Vantage. But X1E1 still showed the older Battery Charging Threshold behaviour as detailed above for X1E1.
c) Does anyone know where to find the Version Number for Lenovo Vantage??

It's strange that our X1E1 Lenovo Vantage Battery Charging Threshold behaviour is different that our X1E3; think X1E3 had the "next generation" of Lenovo Vantage.
[/X1E1_Update]
Daily Driver: (X1E3) X1 Extreme 3rd Gen | mobile broadband (WWAN)
Current Thinkpads: X1E3 | X1E1 | X1C10 | X1C9 | X1C4 | X1C3 | X230
Retired Thinkpads: X250 | T410 | T42 | 560 (circa 1996)

Muse
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Posts: 872
Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:19 pm
Location: Berkeley, CA

Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#6 Post by Muse » Sun Jan 10, 2021 12:45 pm

I believe the inability to set thresholds when the current charge level is above the maximum you're trying to set is nothing new. If you read my first post carefully you'll see that I did let the machine go below that, in fact below the minimum and I still could not set my thresholds without the machine almost immediately (within 5-20 seconds) snapping back into DISABLED for the feature. The machine is still set to disable the feature yet the charge state has stayed stable at 41%. They either broke the code or never got it right in the first place (I favor the latter).
"If a star were a grain of salt, you could fit all the stars visible to the naked eye on a teaspoon, but all the stars in the universe would fill a ball eight miles wide." - A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

Dec. 2010: Now thought to be over 11 miles wide!

RealBlackStuff
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Re: Setting battery charge THRESHOLD on P1

#7 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sun Jan 10, 2021 1:16 pm

$hafting by M$ W10 comes to mind.
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
.

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