R40 Batttery Problem

[hwolfe]

Hi,
I'm having a strange problem with my R40 that started about two months ago. The battery meter started running down to 0% after only about 30 minutes, but the machine keeps running for another hour or so. The Battery Maximizer battery info shows that battery health is degraded with a 16mha maximum capacity (compared to 56 when new).

I've tried "reconditioning the battery" by running it out with all power management off and recharging it to full several times, with no success. I even bought a used battery from ebay that was "reconditioned by IBM" and it exhibits the same symptoms (but Battery Info shows that it is also an old battery with 260+ cycles). Deep draining and recharging didn't help with the 2nd battery either.

Any ideas? Could it be my motherboard? If so, I gues I just turn off power management and ignore the flashing battery warning

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Terrahawk]

You may have one or two bad cells in your battery. As far as I can tell, the times at which the flashing battery warning LED come on are dictated by the current battery voltage. A bad cell can drop the voltage enough to trigger the warning, but the rest of the battery is able to carry the load.

The battery for my X20 and one of the batteries in my R40 are like that - the warning goes off and then they keep going for 30 minutes or more after the Battery Maximiser reports 0% remaining, as long as I don't make them do too much work (simple web surfing and email).

[hoplite]

I don't think deep draining works with Li batteries. I'm pretty sure that only works with Ni batteries.