battery won't charge after failed 'improve battery health'

[--Peter]

hi,

2 days ago I started 'improve battery health' as I had some strange drops form 50% to 70% down to 5% remaining charge. the battery is only 3 month old and has less than 20 cycles.

I started the health improvement before going to bed and it was unfinished the next morning, my T42p (2373-htg, using latest BIOS/embedded controller software & drivers) was in standby mode, it probably observed the timers and put itself in standby.

after this the battery won't charge anymore. the notebook runs fine from battery and AC, but does simply does not charge. other observations:
- cannot change power schemes
- rerunning 'improve battery health' will start, but after a minute or so stop without any error message

what I did so far:
- couple of reboots
- removing all power and doing a hard reset (10x pumping on/off and holding for 45 secs)
- unplugging AC adapter for >10min
- using different AC adpater

I think this is a software problem related to the embedded controller. probably that software still thinks it should run down the battery for the 'health improvement'. how to reset this?

any hints or indicators to solve this problem will be appreciated, thanks!

cheers,
-- Peter

[--Peter]

in the meantime I was able to fix the problem.

I reinstalled all power management related drivers - to no avail. the not-charging-problem would not go away.

the problem with not being able to change power schemes was related to the notebook hardware control (NHC) software running concurrently. disabling it solved this issue.

the charing problems solved itself after I completely drained the battery: kept the notebook running on battery until it switched off (set event to 'no action' for critically low battery status).

I think this is a weird behavior and there should be means to reset an 'improve battery health' cycle by other means (especially after it failed).

anybody seen this before?

cheers,
-- Peter

[--Peter]

hi all,

I sent a problem/bug report to IBM/Lenovo through it's support site regarding this 'improve battery health'-problem.

after a long time I just got back some machine reply that stated that my software warranty is over and that I'm not entitled to get any support. well, I did not ask for that...

is there a contact/address to send in bug reports?

any hints will be welcome, thanks!

-- Peter

[GomJabbar]

It seems that NHC could have caused your problem with Improve Battery Health. If that is the case, then this is not really a bug in Improve Battery Health.