Weird - new A31 battery busted by booting Ubuntu LiveCD?

[Milos]

Hi everyone,

I have a strange problem, where booting a Ubuntu Linux LiveCD to try out that OS seems to have fried a new A31 battery in such a way that it won't charge (even in Windows).

My A31 has the standard Win XP-Pro install with the newest drivers. I booted a Ubuntu Linux (Feisty, 7.04) LiveCD to try it out that OS on the A31 without having to install anything on the hard drive. It booted fine, and detected some things (sound, screen dimming ok, video sort of ok - not quite the ATI Radeon driver)... some things not ok, like suspend and hibernate.. at least out of the box.

The battery gauge seemed to work. However, I tried to let it drain to the bottom to see if it would auto-suspend near empty. Instead, it just lost power (blacked out) at 20-30% battery life or so - I guess the estimate of battery life was way off.

But that's not it - now comes the weird part. I turned on the machine again and booted back into Windows as usual -- the battery would *not* charge. Thinkpad battery info says 10.7V voltage, but 0.00A current. I tried taking the battery out and putting back in, rebooting, etc. Nothing helped. It seems the battery was physically busted by this draining "without proper oversight" in Linux -- either the battery itself is damaged, or else if there's a charging circuit inside that got confused. To me it seems it would be the second, since if a very high resistance was formed somewhere in the battery, a small charge current might cause a large voltage rise and trick the laptop into thinking it is charged, but the current in battery info is not small, it is actually 0.00A. So it seems like it's not even trying to charge..

My Windows machine works fine with my old battery (sort of, see my other post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=43347), so it must be the new battery..

Anyone know how I can figure out what's wrong, whether I can fix it (e.g. software reset of battery charging circuit, etc..).

Thanks for any help - or even thoughts on what could have actually happened.. it's kind of curious. As is, if it's true that my battery is damaged, it seems to me you could purposefully write a virus that actually busts people's hardware, i.e. batteries. Kinda scary.

Milos

[proaudioguy]

Both my batteries lived life fully charged. One of them holds a charge for about a minute. The other is like yours. I never had Linux. There is no method to reset the battery. They learned from that mistake.

I've been using my Ultrabay battery for 2 years with no issues. I don't actually run it on that. It needs a battery installed to run full speed. I have always used the A31 as a portable desktop with AC power.

[GomJabbar]

There is the option to "Recondition" the battery in Battery MaxiMiser and I believe in Power Manager as well. However notice what Lenovo wrote.
(FYI, the A31 has a Li-Ion type battery.)

Conditioning Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries may improve their capacity, but will not help Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) batteries. To condition NiMH batteries completely discharge them (also called a deep discharge) and recharge them every few months. Do not do this to Li-Ion batteries because it will actually damage them.

Troubleshooting battery issues - ThinkPad

You also might be interested in reading the following thread.
http://hardware.mcse.ms/archive27-2004-8-55315.html

[carbon_unit]

No reason for two threads. Please continue here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=