Battery fully charged - but doesn't work?

[stevie02476]

I have a T42, with two batteries and an external charger. I run the T42 almost exclusively on the batteries.

Both batteries are about the same age and have gone though about 100 charge cycles each. Until recently, both batteries have been working fine, although of course they don't last quite as long as they did to start with.

Just recently, one of the batteries has stopped working completely. It seems to charge fine on the charger, but the T42 won't even make any attempt at booting with this battery. If I plug the T42 in to the AC with the bad battery installed, it shows the battery with a 98% charge.

The other battery is still working fine, so I assume the laptop itself is fine. And I can't believe the bad battery is just worn out, since it has been very consistently working until just a few days ago.

I checked the IBM/Lenovo site, and has a section that exactly describes my problem: battery faq


However, they say the cure is to power the computer up with the battery (and the power cord, of course) and to do a full shutdown. But this hasn't helped.

Is there any other way to reset the control circuitry inside a battery?

Thanks for info. -Steve

[stevie02476]

By the way, I want to add, when I try to boot from the bad battery, there is absolutely no response whatsover, not the slightest little blink or sound or anything. As if you pushed the On button with no battery (or cord) at all. Any hints? -Steve

[ZoneMan]

Hi Steve,

If you have another battery that works fine in the thinkpad with no issues, the other battery is defective.

Batteries have a 1 year warranty, if under warranty call your support center and have it replaced.

Zone.

[brainpicker]

Start your laptop with the battery attached and a/c plugged in. Then go to battery information from the power management menu in the "Thinkpad Configuration" and check the battery health. From there try to do one of those automatic recharge cycles (you can have the system start one from a menu there) and the system will then run off battery until it reaches about 3% when it will hybernate or suspend, then recharge. Don't interrupt the entire process (maybe run it overnight?). When completed all should be well. If not, it's bad and you might check for warranty or replacement. That;s the only thing I know to do when my batteries get weird (though I've never had one like yours).

Yak