TP A22M Battery gone bad... or not?

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Dana · #1 Post by **Dana** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 1:20 am

I think my Li-ion battery (02K6618) is probably getting weak but I have some questions.

First I tried 3 deep discharge/charge cycles with a normal W2K boot but did not gain anything to speak of. Timers off, suspend off. Design capacity 38.88 Wh but current fully charged capacity reported as 3.08 Wh. Battery will only run the computer for 10 or 12 minutes... but it comes back to a full charge suspiciously fast.

Today I booted to W2K Safe mode (Text)The battery ran the computer for a full two hours. And it took much longer for the battery to recharge. I didn't just let the computer sit there. I did some work on it, exploring directories, ran Open Office, Quicken, etc. So it wasn't just sitting there with the HD spun down or anything. I've looked at BIOS settings and such for any clues.

My Safe Mode exerience makes me wonder if the battery has more life in it than I give it credit for but I don't understand the quick rundown with a normal W2K boot. Is the battery meter out of calibration or some such thing? I'm not sure where to go from here.

Dana

LtTPfan · #2 Post by **LtTPfan** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:14 am

That is certainly odd. Have you updated all your IBM drivers and software? Your meter should have been recalibrated when you deep-cycled 3 times.

Dana · #3 Post by **Dana** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:31 am

Last night I was looking on the Lenovo site and it appears there are some new power management and battery management utilities available. It is a bit confusing as to exactly what I need to download and install but I will get it sorted out.

I must say however that I've used the automated ThinkPad Update utility and it has been a long time since it found anything. Last night it would not run and I don't know if something was down or whether URLs have changed and broken it... though I doubt the latter.

Since the run down time is so quick on a normal W2K boot I think I have only done one "real" deep discharge... the one done under a Safe Mode command line boot. Make that two since I did another one overnight.

Dana

Dana · #4 Post by **Dana** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 10:21 am

I downloaded the new power management utilities but gained nothing from it. Under normal W2k boot I only get 10-15 minutes battery time but still get
1 1/2 - 2 hours when booted to Safe Mode Command Line.

What is the difference here?

TP A22M Battery gone bad... or not?

TP A22M Battery gone bad... or not?

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