Strange power issue with a R51

[schen]

I recently picked up a "new to me" R51 to replace my wife's A31. It's nicely spec'd with a Flexview SXGA+ screen and decent physical condition. It came from one of those surplus outfits without HDD.

Anyway, I picked up a new WD 250Gb from Micro Center on sale and was off and running. I did a clean load of XPP and that all went fine. Started the Lenovo Software Installer and that SEEMED to go OK, except for the fact that the battery utility failed to load. That was a little strange, but I went back and manually did that this morning. After that, I spent so time doing the other software and the million MS Updates which was fine as well with just a little weirdness in that almost all the software failed to "Autorun".

Then I noticed that the battery light on the outside of the case stays on even when the machine is shut down. The next thing was that it seemed like it wasn't charging the battery at all and didn't seem to recognize any battery info. I switched batteries (all the batteries used have been checked out on my T41) and it recognized the new battery, but wouldn't charge it after I plugged it in at 15% (it stayed at 15% for half an hour).

In the middle of all this, I was trying to load the software from our HP AIO and it wouldn't recognize the disk. Wouldn't autostart or explore. I then switched to 2 other "know-good" drives (a DVD/CDRW that came with it, and the DVD Multi-Burner from my T41), still No Joy. In the meantime, I had tried the disk in the T41 and it dutifully tried to load the software on that machine.

So....... Do I have a machine with power issues, or what? I'd be happy to try whatever suggestion anyone comes up with. I've worked on a number of R5x machines in the last 6 months and have never seen anything like it.

[Harryc]

Schen, T40/41/42 system boards are similar to yours except for no firewire. See the post from Richk in this thread about a fuse that should be checked for a no charging condition.

[schen]

Schen, T40/41/42 system boards are similar to yours except for no firewire. See the post from Richk in this thread about a fuse that should be checked for a no charging condition.

That sound's pretty much like what I'm experiencing so I'd bet that I have a fuse issue as well. Do you think that those fuses have something to do with my strange optical drive behavior as well?