ThinkPad Power Manager
One of my favorite utilities on our ThinkPads is our ThinkPad Power Manager. Sadly, this is one of those utilities that people consider "junk in the preload" and do not bother to download and reinstall after they wipe their systems clean and do a scratch reinstall of Windows (another topic for another day).
Many are familiar with ThinkPad Power Manager through the little icon down by their system tray that alternates from showing % charged when plugged into AC power and x:xx minutes left when running on battery power.
This icon alone to me would be worth the hassle of reinstalling this utility. Why? The answer can be summed up in one word. Accuracy. Take the battery status icon found in the system tray (please). This icon is terribly inaccurate. What else would explain why it can tell you that you have 35% of your battery remaining one minute, and the very next minute tell you that your battery level is critical and you need to connect to an AC adapter immediately.
Standard battery utilities are generic. They have to work on all notebooks and can only report status that is given to them by the power management drivers provided. One of the advantages to designing our own notebook PCs is that we have the ability to control and monitor hardware like few other vendors out there. We have two chips in our ThinkPad notebooks designed just for power management functions. One resides in the battery. Another resides on the main systemboard itself. They communicate with each other and dynamically adjust power properties so that you can get the most battery life out of your system possible. One of their functions is to determine based on current system processing load how much time it will either take to charge the battery or how much time you actually have left on battery power. Unlike Windows, they are accurate because they have been specifically designed for our systems.
The way you interface with these power management CPUs is through our ThinkPad Power Manager utility. (Find it on the ThinkVantage entry on the Start Menu or just double click the battery icon in your system tray.) When the utility opens, you'll see three tabs that will allow you to optimize your system for maximum battery life. For today, I am going to focus on the battery information tab.
The Battery Information tab is a computer geek's paradise. Not only can you see more detail about your battery than most people ever knew existed, but you can also use the dropdown box to get information on any secondary batteries attached to your system. Clicking the Battery Maintenance button in the upper right hand corner also brings up another settings area in which you can help optimize your battery's longevity — in terms of months, not hours.
This screen exists because most people do not follow best practices to ensure their batteries will last for the long term. Most people keep their notebooks plugged in all day. They may unplug them at night to go home, but then the first thing they do is dig their AC adapters out of their bags and plug in again. This means that most days the average notebook battery is going from 100% charged to 97% or 98% and then being recharged to 100% again. Done again and again, this "topping off" is TERRIBLE for batteries. It makes them wear out prematurely as each time you do this, you add another cycle to the battery.
I have mine set so that untill my battery drops below 90%, it will never charge the battery. Once it drops below 90%, my system will continue to charge it until it is at 100% capacity. Of course, if you don't like this, there is an option to turn it off as well so that no matter what, your system always charges to 100%.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Could you provide the link on where we can download? Thanks!
January 24th, 2007 at 10:26 am
This is all well and good, but there’s so much junk installed that you’ve turned at least the X41 tablet into an unusable computer. I use it in teaching and before I wiped it and installed a clean system my students were literally laughing at this machine — not very good advertising for Thinkpads. I think it greatly behooves Lenovo to provide a better way for users to control the behavior of these extra programs. I don’t know if the Thinkpad Power Manager is what crippled my computer but that’s the point — I have no way of knowing the performance hit these add-ons cost.
It’s enough of a problem that it gives me pause in upgrading to an X60 tablet.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:17 am
This does indeed seem like a useful utility, and thanks for the very good information about optimizing recharge settings to maximize battery life.
Hopefully I’ll someday be able to try these things out on a real ThinkPad, though I’ve been trying to purchase an SXGA+ X60 tablet for a month and a half.
I have hope, however. Reliable sources have told me they’ll be shipping ‘in bunches‘ by the end of the month, and there’s only a week left until then.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Kevin — I agree with you 100%. What was really causing the performance degredation was the HDD itself was 1.8″ technology that spun at 4200 rpm. We did this for space saving reasons, among others. However, we got lots of feedback that the performance was poor. On the ThinkPad X60 Tablet, we addressed this by using an industry-standard 2.5″ HDD, and there are 7200 rpm models available as well. We’re seeing approximately 50% performance increases on average from the X41 Tablet to the X60 Tablet. Your mileage will vary, but if you had an X41t with 512MB of RAM and upgrade to an X60t with 1GB of RAM, I wouldn’t be surprised if your performance was much more than that.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Orion — It is dependent on which ThinkPad you own. However, here is a link that may apply. If your system is not listed, then respond back with what system you own.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-61583
January 24th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Junk? Hardly!
This is one of the few Lenovo applications I throw on after a fresh install.
I think Lenovo needs to do a better job educating consumers about the “Software Installer” which I think is called “System Update” now.
That application is one of the countless numbers of reasons I will keep on buying ThinkPads. After a fresh install I load up the “Software Installer” executable, and my gigabit Ethernet drivers off a USB key, select what I want, and let Lenovo download and install everything.
It is the sheer definition of simplicity.
Thank you Lenovo for the Software Installer. It keeps my drivers up to date, and makes fresh install pain free!
January 24th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Where can you get the Software Installer from, because I have done a fresh XP install?
ty
January 24th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Triff
I believe you can access the software installer from: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....IGR-4ZKMCT
and the system update utility from:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....VSU-UPDATE
January 24th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Hi
ThinkPad PM is one of the great features that i use everyday its very usefull
After receiving a new ThinkPad i always doo a clean install of XP i install ThinkPad PM And other ThinkVantage softwares but i delete the other useless junk that makes my system slow!
January 25th, 2007 at 12:15 am
See what I’m talking about?! Triff had no clue such an app existed!
January 25th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Hi
The “charge threshold” feature is great, as long as it work properly. I experienced personally and see some reports in forums.thinkpads.com, that the power manager start charging battery in strange way.
For example, I set the recharge threshold of my T60 to start charging at 10%. Then I turn off the computer, unplug the power, plug it again, and turn on the computer. I found that when the power manager indicate that the battery is charging, even the threshold has not reached.
To avoid the problem, I have to make sure that I plug the power after power manager has launched. And even this is not always work. Before I type this message, I plug in the power when the battery level is 98%, and it start charging! (My threshold is 10%).
I love using ThinkPad, and I wish this kind of annoyance be solved. I want to focus on my work, not the charging cycle.
January 25th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Please explain.
A charge cycle means using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge ( http://www.apple.com/batteries ), but about charging from 98% to 100% you stated “you add another cycle to the battery”.
Is it means, that ThinkPad adds necessarily cycle counts?
More resources about batteries: http://www.batteryuniversity.com Articles here explains, that for Li-Ion batteries cycle count another way too.
Where truth is?
January 25th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
The power management is great, but its sometimes inconsistant with messages. My t60 was working fine till I got a message from the message center
“Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”
However, according to the power manager “The battery is in good condition”. The battery itself seems to be *working*.
Rajeev
January 25th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
I have the exact same problem as thinkpanda described above. This is discussed on the thinkpads forums as well (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=35267). Is there a way around this?
January 25th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
We’re looking into it guys. Matt or I will report back once we get some info.
January 26th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I usually leave my thinkpad plugged in for very long periods of time — sometimes off, but often on or in sleep mode. When the battery loses charge over time (just from lack of use, small leaks, etc…), is it still “topped off” by the charger? Or is the battery completely cut out of the power circuit when my T60 is at or near 100% and on AC power?
Also, with upcoming battery technologies, do you anticipate a shift towards alternatives such as lithium polymer. Recent improvements give them a higher energy-per-mass ratio than Li-Ion, as well as better longevity and a tendency to _not_ explode.
January 27th, 2007 at 5:42 am
It’s a good application in Windows XP. In Windows Vista, IT IS BROKEN! At least on the X60 Tablet with a clean install….
January 30th, 2007 at 11:28 am
This is my favorite ThinkPad utility too. But here I want to report a problem with Vista desktop transparency effect. When I turn the transparency effect on and set the desktop background with light color background or something not darkened wallpaper. The Power Manager green bar will also lighten and the % text indicator will effected too.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:12 am
When on battery on my X60, I have mine display time left instead of percent charge. The time seems to shift around by about an hour. Is this because of differences in power consumption with fan running, etc?
January 31st, 2007 at 12:58 am
To Tim and Thinkpanda,
Regarding the charging problem — thinkpads ignoring custom thresholds — I have to wonder whether this is an issue with the BIOS. In the Bios setting (v2.07 in my T60) there are settings for battery maintenance. However there are no custom thresholds. I do not know whether the TVT PowerManager software which is dependent on the OS can change the BIOS settings. My guess is not. Therefore, when the thinkpads are not running an OS (and therefore no Power Manager) the charging behavior revert to whatever the setting it is in the BIOS.
If this is true, a fix would be to allow custom thresholds in the BIOS setting, and sync that setting with Power Manager when it is running.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:39 am
To all who have commented on the charging thresholds, I have alterted our team who are going to take a look at the problem.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
can u change the charge thresholds on the r40? I dont see this option anywhere.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Like Rajeev my T60p says ‘irreparable damage to battery’, yet the battery works fine and on the battery status page, condition is ‘good’ and cycle count only 10. Is there any way to reset this indicator?
February 7th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I have the same problem as Rajeev and Simon. Just came up with an ‘irreparable damage’ warning today but the battery wasn’t hot and everything seems to be working just fine. Unnerving. Time for a support call I guess.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:00 am
What about the “Optimize for battery lifespan (automatically change for me)” option? I’ve had it selected since I got the ThinkPad, but it still appears to charge to 100%. Also, it has never notified me that the thresholds have changed, despite the fact that “Notify me when thresholds change” is checked. So I can only assume that it has never changed my thresholds.
February 13th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I have a T43, and the fan is driving me crazy!
I’ve tried all kinds of power settings, but I just can’ save any new profiles. That is, I can save them, but they never show up anywhere. I downloaded the latest, then ended up removing everything. Now even the XP power manager won’t save my profiles. What’s wrong with this thing?
February 16th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I am experiencing the same error message as Rajeev, Simon and Jess have indicated. I got a “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” message after 4 repeats of “Battery error is detected. A battery error is detected.”. All these messages come from the Message Center.
Funny thing is they come right after a “Learn how to achieve all day computing…With additional ThinkPad batteries…” helpful hint.
I called the problem in, and Lenovo sent a new battery very promptly. However, I just got the same message with the new battery. I called the very helpful tech support a second time. On their advice, I rebooted and the diagnostics and found nothing. “We” think it’s a sensor or software issue.
My battery seems to work just fine despite the error message. It is a very unnerving message coming from an unexpected program.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Is there a way for non-admin users under windows XP to change their current power scheme? I’m working in a corporate environment where most users (fortunately) don’t work with admin rights. This feature would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.
February 18th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Hello,
I just discovered this blog, which it’s going to be of great help because I just received a new T60 (still w. XP), so this kind of knowledge is always welcome.
I have a question in regards to the battery. I will be using my laptop at the office most of the time (i.e., plugged in to the AC adapter) and I have heard that in that cases it is best to remove the battery in order to avoid constant drain/refill of the battery which in the end only wears it down, unnecessarily.
Is this also the case for this system ?
Many thanks in advance for your help!!
-art-
February 26th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
It seems that on Vista changing the battery setting fools the laptop into thinking it’s not plugged in cause the laptop is not charging when it’s under 100% charged. This makes my laptop go into the battery mode and dim the screen etc.
This is with the Optimize for battery lifespan setting
February 26th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
[...] Nice integration! There are other nice touches like this…. but Lenovo gets big kudos for doing things properly. I’m also really impressed with their battery charging optimization that extends the life of your battery by not charging it if it’s got more than 96% juice. [...]
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
Charging two baterries too slow. I’m using T60 with UltraBay battery and when charging it takes a lot of time. It charges quickly main battery to some 90% and then slowly charges to 100% adn after that it starts chargin the way the secondary battery. ON HP couple of years ago I used to have a different chargin process – it charges quickly main battery to 90% then secondary battery to 90% and after that slowly continued charge both batteries to 100%. This has advatange as you get sooner more battery life.
It would be also great to implement possibility to select which battery is discharging first (main or secoondary) as with UltraBay fully charged I would be able to change main battery without hybernation….
March 5th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
The battery maintenance tool is a great feature – when it works. I have the same problem as users report above, with my z60t charging often times when it has 95 percent charge, even though I set my threshold to start charging at 35%.
Is there a fix yet to this?
March 6th, 2007 at 10:12 am
I have a new R60, updated with the latest drivers, utilities, and BIOS (2.08), and it has never honored the customized (e.g., start charging when below 80%) nor automatic battery lifespan settings. As soon as the battery level drops below 96% it ALWAYS starts charging! The 96% level is the level for “fully charged”. So this utility and the related software/firmware is NOT working.
I just discovered this blog and see that a lot of individuals are observing the same behavior.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:48 am
I’ve set my T60 power manager to start charging when it below 80%.
As experiment to show whether this utility working, when my battery meter shows 81%, i turned my plug on. When i check my battery status, it shown ‘No Activity’ and my battery remains at 81%.
What does it means by battery status ‘No Activity’ and what happened to the Intelligent Business Machine Power Manager?
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hi guys,
Great to find this blog – it appears the Lenovo guys who run this feeds problems back. I have the following issue with Power Manager under Vista Business (X60 Tablet). With the power settings set at “Power source optimized” the machine always defaults to the settings that should apply under “running on batteries” innitially. That is, if i boot up, i get a low brightness screen and a reduced speed processor. The way to fix this is to pull out the power chord, the machine then briefly goes to full brightness (and i presume full processor power) after which it switches back to low brightness – if i THEN plug the chord back in, the machine correctly recognises that it is plugged in and switches to the state that should apply when plugged in. Wondering if there is a fix yet or otherwise if you guys would please report this?
Thanks for a great site.
March 27th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
The battery icon that is located near the hinge on both the inside and outside of the lid on models before the T60
would indicate amber if the battery was below 60% and being charged. When the charge level got near 90%, the
icon would turn green, and blink until charging stopped at 100%. My battery is now at 42% on my T60 is
blinking green at charge level 42%. Shouldn’t it be amber since the charge is below 90%?
March 27th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Hi i have a question regarding the battery. My think pad power manager has this cross sign on it and it has this message “error detected”. My battery is not getting charged and the battery indicator is blinking orange. it would be really helpful if someone would know what this means.
April 8th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.
I’ve had my Z60t less than 1 year.
So, is there a solution?
April 9th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Hi, I’m also intersted in the very problem that Tom Beyer asked about earlier…
How do I give control over the Power Management unility to ordinary (i.e. non-admin) users (under WindowsXP). All users should be able to set the power setting to “presentation” when they are giving a presentation etc. It should at least be possible to select one of the pre-defined power settings.
I already changed the security settings of all filed that I could identify to be somehow connected to the Power Management to be readable/writable/executable by all users, but this didn’t help. Any ideas?
April 9th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I have a V100, is it possible to add that Thinkpad Power Manager software on here because it looks very useful.
Another thing, Ive have this notebook around 7-8 months and PC Doctor says that the battery (3 cell) is not only charging to 46%. Would this be covered under the warrenty?
April 16th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Please fix Power Manager! Getting Power Manager is probably the 2nd reason I buy Thinkpads.
This random behavior were Power Manager ignores the preset charge and discharge percentage settings is very frustrating. I have a clean XP installation and sometimes on power up all is well. Power Manager honors my 49% start charge and my 54% stop charge settings. Other times I catch it charging when it is over 54%.
If I go to the Battery Information Tab and click the Battery Maintenance button and check that 49% and 54% are my settings (and they are) and click OK, the status changes to No Activity as it should. But if I watch, I notice that after some delay time it switches back to Charging.
When I go back to the Battery Maintenance screen, the settings are still 49% and 54% but, if I press the up arrow on the stop charge setting, it does not go to 55% but rather 100%. I believe that value is in fact 100% for some bug reason and is not displayed as such. If the value really is 100%, than that explain why it keeps trying to charge the battery.
I am an electrical engineer and have designed LiIon battery packs and chargers and it is not a simple task. I feel the Thinkpad does one of the best jobs of all laptop makers in battery systems.
LiIon cell manufactures indicate that keeping the cells at 40-60% charge is the best level for extending the life of the batteries. LiIon cell hate being held at full charge and have fewer cycles than other chemistries. I don’t need my battery often so I love Power Manager’s charge setting FEATURE. Especially when it works.
LiIon cells don’t like heat either. I never operate my Thinkpad without a hard surface under it to keep an air flow path under it. I have used a piece of aluminum, a cookie sheet, and now a lap desk (basically a clip board with a pillow under it) when using the Thinkpad on my lap. I have 2 batteries that are 4, yes four, years old that still work be it at about 50% of the original capacity but hell most of our Dell laptops at work need batteries once a year and they don’t get battery use all that often.
Like I said, charge settings are a Feature – thanks IBM/Lenovo. That said, PLEASE see if there is a bug in Power Manager and correct it – Please.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:11 am
I also got the “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one”. This came out of no where after my computer went to stand by tonight. When I woke it up, there were 4 battery error messages one of which was the one above. any update on this?
mine is the 2623-d3u. Just got it two weeks ago.
thanks,
matt
April 25th, 2007 at 10:13 am
An update to my posting of 6-March-2007:
Machine: ThinkPad R60 (9461-CTO)
After I updated the BIOS and some drivers, including some power management drivers, in early April, I thought that the problem I was observing was finally corrected. My custom battery charging levels are set to start at 80% and stop at 99%. The battery had drained down to 91% (below the previously observed 95%) and hadn’t started charging. So I thought all was well and was awaiting the drop down to 80% to see the charge kick in.
It still doesn’t work correctly! Yesterday, the battery was at 91%. Today it is back at 100%. It didn’t even honor the 99% stop level! This wonderful thing appears to have a mind of its own!
Note that I hibernate my system when I’m not using it so I know that it wasn’t running on battery power.
I’m really frustrated. Can’t we get this feature fixed?
-John
April 30th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Same problem here.
“Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”
Only one message.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:00 pm
It sounds like I am having a similar battery problem on my 6 week old z60t.. It drained to practically nothing, in a ridiculously short amount of time & has spent the last 2 days with a fast blinking orange battery light, while making little to no progress on actually charging the battery (says it will take 48 hrs, with no decrease in actual time), although the power management software says the battery is in good condition. I’d appreciate any help anyone might be able to give me!!
May 7th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Katie, i have same problem. I buy factory refurbished Thinkpad Z60T model:25132GU. The battery is charget up to 58% and then stoped charging. Then try to calibrate battery with power management software. nothing as result. after 2 days the battery have 0% power. orange light is blinking but battery do not charging (software say 48 hours need for full charge). My BIOS is old revision but without full charget battery can not upgrade bios.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Maintaining my “own battery policy”, which is mainly based on using two batteries by turns, I surprisingly found the power management switching back to default settings every time I switch the batteries. Keeping the fact in mind that the notebook is able to identify a particular battery by serial number, which is readable for the machine, wouldn’t it be a fine feature to use the settings last known for this battery?
May 25th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I have had a TP T60 for a little over a year. In that time, I’ve got through 5 Ultrabay batteries. What happens is suddenly the second battery will only hold 82% (or 67% or some other increment) of a full charge. The “Full Charge Capacity” has a corresponding drop in watt-hours from the Design Capacity of 29.16Wh. This isn’t a gradual drop, but a sudden one.
Lenovo has replaced the battery 4 times now. They have replaced the motherboard, the Ultrabay, and an “inverter card” (not sure what that is). The current battery is less than 2 weeks old, and yesterday suddenly went from holding a 100% charge to only holding an 82% charge (and the Full Charge Capacity dropped from 29.16Wh to 24.05Wh).
I can’t believe I’ve gotten 5 bad batteries in a row, and they have replaced much of the laptop’s electronics. Anyone else seen this or have any ideas what it is? I called tech support last night, and their current theory is that everything is fine, and that the Power Manager software is simply reporting things incorrectly. However, I only get about 45 minutes from the secondary battery now, so I don’t think that is it – I think the battery really won’t charge all the way. They had me do the normal charge/discharge cycle, and I’ve downloaded all updates to BIOS, power manager, etc.. (I’m running Vista, BTW.) The last thing they had me do is reset the battery gauge. So, now the battery shows “Good” and 100% charge, but it is still only charging to 82% of the original Design Capacity. (All that did was reset the gauge to think that 82% of a full charge is now really 100%!)
Any ideas?
TIA.
May 29th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
“Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”
has anyone yet figured out whether this is a chronic problem with the hardware, or if the battery message is just wrong? Have now been through 2 computers & batteries.
Al
May 29th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I am responsible for 9 Lenovo Z60t’s 5 of them are used on a frequent basis. The other 4 are kept in my office and are for use in emergency situations in case of a disaster. I had plugged in or turned on these 4 laptops for three months and when I did two of them gave me the “Irrepairable Battery Damage” meesage. Yet they still had a 97% charge on the battery. I ran the battery down and it would not recharge. When I called IBM Tech support they told me that I should never store a laptop with a charged battery. I’ve never heard of such a thing and now I’m concerned about our emergency loptops not being ready when we need them. So far I’ve heard about batteries failing from regular use but now I have two that failed from very little use. One of these that failed only had a cycle count of 4.
May 29th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
In one year I’ve had three batteries fail with the error “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”. Lenovo will not replace the battery since the second replacement battery is outside of 30 day warranty. IBM is having someone come onsite to look at my computer. Looks like there’s a bigger issue here. IBM on the phone claimed they are unaware of any issues. Note: I do keep my computer docked with power 99% of the time with the battery going to 96% and then recharging. Is keeping it “topped” causing the issue?
May 30th, 2007 at 3:59 am
Hello all,
I am an IBM technician who has stumbled on this site by googling this battery issue (“Battery Error detected”). Recently I received a service call from Lenovo regarding a T60 with this particular problem; on-site diagnostics does not show any hardware failure. I did replace the user’s battery however the problem continued. From the looks of it a lot of people in here are also having the same issue, however no firm solution has been posted neither on forums or from Lenovo.
On Thursday May.31th/2007 I will be opening a case with IBM Country Support and will find a solution for this particular problem and will report back here so everyone else benefits.
I understand frustration expressed by the users here, hopefully I can help ease the pain for those who are affected by this problem. Please check back as I will be updating this site with the progress.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services representative)
Vancouver, Canada
May 30th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Same problem as expressed by few users on top. Low battery indicator keep blinking.
The charging is extremely slow, and keeps saying need 48 hrs to fully recharge.
the laptop will not power up, although i see 48% charge remaining on the charge indicator.
I can’t update the system, as it would not connect to the package indicator.
May 31st, 2007 at 7:52 am
Same problem here. laptop x60.
I’ve two batteries failed with the error “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” And both are new batteries.
And batteries dont recharge, indicator shows 0% and the error msg.
really really looking for some advice or help.
May 31st, 2007 at 8:32 am
Since my enry on May 29th I’ve had two additional battery failures. That now makes 4 out of nine failing within the past seven days. I’m at a loss on how to get this problem elevated.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:16 am
For the past few days, I have been removing my battery when I use the AC adapter so as to prevent my battery from being ‘overcharged’. But when I fit the battery back into the laptop after ensuring that it was fully charged, I realised that the different schemes found in Power Manager are no longer there. Does this mean I have to reinstall Power Manager? Does it have something to do with my taking out the battery?
May 31st, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Country support confirmed the issue, IBM/Lenovo are aware of this problem. According to a specialist, Lenovo fixed this issue recently by battery firmware update. Unfortunately this firmware update is not possible at a user level and in turn would need a new battery with updated firmware.
Also there is still the possibility that the systemboard itself could be faulty. I will report back once I have replaced the board in the T60 I am looking after.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 1st, 2007 at 5:15 pm
This is ridiculous. Why should I spend money on a new battery?, when it can be fixed with a firmware update. Shouldn’t they just do it for us?.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 am
ThinkPad X60 which I’ve had for only a few months.
I want to get in line with this “irreparable damage”. It just started. Battery is dead. Blinking battery light. “Plugged in, not charging” status and the power manager has the dreaded message. Unfortunately, with the battery totally dead, it is not possible to get any BIOS updates and I don’t happen to have a spare battery.
Looking forward to a solution (which I am guessing will be new part(s)?)….
J Lerman
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:18 am
[...] var count = 0; for (var i=0;i Saturday, 02 June 2007 Lenovo X60 Thinkpad Battery problems – will there be a new battery recall? The battery on my 3 month old Lenovo X60 is dead and I am getting the dreaded notice in thepower manager “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with the new one.” In addition to the message in the Power manager, I have the following symptoms: Battery Indicator light is blinking orange Power status says “Plugged in, not charging” Computer shuts down immediately when unplugged (since the battery is dead). This is not atypical of old batteries that need replacement, but this battery is fairly new and has not been abused in any way. I attempted a recommended BIOS update but this requires a fully charged battery. I checked the March 27th battery recall, but my battery was not on the list. Luckily, I found a comment thread in the LenovoBlogs under a post that is a few months old called “Power Manager.” There is a new string of comments that began a few days ago with other people having this problem. An IBM technician from Vancouver has joined the thread, identifed the problem and is currently seeking a solution. So if you have found my blog post via searching for a solution to this problem… keep an eye on the comments on the tail end of this post’s comments: http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=52. I like having found the http://www.LenovoBlogs.com site. It’s a mini “blogs.msdn.com” and a good stab at corporate transparency and accessibility. The product manager’s direct phone number is even published there! Tablet Saturday, 02 June 2007 14:18:14 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) | Comments [0] | On this page…. [...]
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Problem continues… Systemboard replacement did not solve our problem as suspected. Next step is trying another battery (Another brand) and also re-imaging laptop to find out if this is a driver conflict that is causing this problem.
Bhanu – I don’t know what your situation is, if the problem is related to you battery I am sure Lenovo would replace that for you. Once again it is not possible for the consumer to flash the battery firmware. The firmware on the battery is changed when the circuit board in the battery is changed.
I will report back once I find a solution to this problem.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Brad
If this helps any here are some details.
Before this happened, I used my computer for a while on the battery only.
I did not use it for about a week. I can’t remember if it was hibernating or if I had properly shut it down.
Yesterday I attached it to the Ultrabase and plugged my powercord into the ultrabase and turned on the p.c. I don’t remember noticing the battery light blinking at that time.
When the computer booted up, I got a recommendation to install the Lenovo ThinkVantage updates. There was one critical update (BIOS), some recommended ones and a few others.
I told it to get the critical and recommended updates, but then saw that the download would be fairly large so then told it only to do the BIOS update. After downloading the update it told me I coudn’t update the BIOS becasue my battery was not fully charged. I clicked the okay button and the status on the update manager said that the BIOS had been downloaded and installed (probably just an assumption and didn’t realize I had to cancel.)
This is when I noticed the blinking light and delving in to finally realize there was a serious problem.
I took the battery out and put it back in a few times – twice to reseat it and a few other times to get a look at the serial number (to see if it was on the recall list, but it is not (yet
).
I’ve blogged about the problem also to help anyone who needs to be able to find their way here. [http://www.thedatafarm.com/blog/2007/06/02/LenovoX60ThinkpadBatteryProblemsWillThereBeANewBatteryRecall.aspx]
June 4th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Brad,
Thankyou for looking into this problem, you seem to be the only one paying attention to this problem. I have been incontact with technical support several times and they are only concerned with the unit I have that are under warrenty. As I emntioned above 4 out of 5 have gone bad and this did not concern them they only wanted to send me new battery for the units under warrenty. I spoke with Semir Vaghmar (770)905-8016 and he stated there was no known issue with the batterys onther than those on the replacement list. It may help if more people in tehc support now about the possibility of an issue.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:31 am
An Update…
It looks like we’re getting somewhere now. As a troubleshooting step, since we have changed everything and the problem persisted the next logical step was a re-image. I supplied my customer with a new hard drive and brand new updated CD/DVD re-image kit for his specific machine type.
User finished the re-image process, I asked him to not install any updates or any programs yet. At the end of the day I spoke with the user and that problem has not come back. User is to begin doing all updates (Thinkadvantage + windows + etc…) and start installing his programs one by one.
So far it looks like a program/driver conflict was causing a lot of battery issues. Once again I will list the symptoms:
1. Battery charge available percentage while on AC keeps fluctuating (between 4% and 98%)
2. IBM Messenger gives “Battery Critical Error” prompts.
3. Intermittently the battery light would start flashing amber and back to green.
4. Battery gauge in lower right went gray sometimes stating no battery installed.
5. Battery information showed battery in good condition and then it would disappear from list.
6. While on battery power during charge available % fluctuation, it forced laptop to go into standby as it thought it was out of battery.
So far all these symptoms were fixed by a complete system re-image. This is not the same as the image already in the pre-desktop environment. I recommend getting the latest CD/DVD re-image kit for your specific model.
David Gilliam – My apologies for your situation, indeed you are right that Lenovo will replace batteries that are listed in the recall list and they also pay attention to the 1 year limited warranty on batteries. Yes it is possible that the information is not spread out in Lenovo tech support, information I have posted here are from product engineer department which will eventually make it into call centre database.
As many of you are aware, Lenovo bought the PC sector from IBM. Although we as in IBM are still supplying onsite technical assistant, the two companies are not integrated as one company.
Julia Lerman – My suggestion to you is, in-order to isolate the problem try to see if you can boot into a WinPE environment (Windows XP running from CD) and see if you have the same symptoms. Some tip: Try to update your BIOS through the self booting CD and not the Thinkadvantage. Double check your BIOS version and if you don’t have the latest, updated via cd image BIOS update process.
I will report back once my T60 user tests this theory further and seeing if the battery issues comes back or not. Stay tuned…
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 5th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Julia Lerman – Can you please post your machine type and sub-model number please? It will be in the format of xxxx-xxx located on the back of the laptop next to the serial number. Your problem actually maybe a systemboard, but to look into RETAIN (IBM database of reported problems) I’ll need to know the machine type.
I guess another good way to see if this is software related in your case:
1. Remove power and battery, insert battery back into laptop and without turning on the laptop plug the AC in, does the battery light begin flashing amber? If it does leave it running for a few hours, does it eventually turn green?
2. Under battery power, turn laptop on and go into BIOS and stay there for a little. What is the battery light doing and is the laptop staying on?
3. If your embedded controller is damaged durng Thinkadvantage BIOS update you will have battery charging issues. If you could charge the battery a little and/or borrow someone’s battery for a few minutes and update your BIOS you may be set.
4. Failure for any of these to work, I would place a service call for the laptop and recommend a battery and systemboard replacement. However you will need to make sure that you get the exact same symptoms while not in your windows just so we dont have software conflicts.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 5th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Unfortunately, today’s morning i’ve got this famous message – ”Battery Error detected”
In my situation the following appears:
1.Battery light flashing amber
2.IBM Messenger gives “Battery Critical Error” “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”
3.Battery charge available 100% in Power Manager
When i remove AC, system shutdown completely
The system: T60p 2623DDU, Advanced Docking Station
June 5th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Thanks for the help, Brad.
I just want to let you know that this is not my main machine. It is for testing and for travelling and I am fortunately not travelling until mid-July. So while this is definitely a problem for me, it is not a show stopper, and so far, I’m in a perfectly good mood about all of this.
Machine Type=6363-85U
1. a) battery out then battery in then plug in to a/c) amber battery light starts flashing right away. b) I have previously left it plugged in (power off) for hours and it makes no difference to the battery status.
2) There is no such thing for me right now as “under battery power”.
Without the a/c, I have no power at all.
3) Someone is mailing me a spare battery for further testing.
I’ll try the WinXP boot and report back.
Julie
June 5th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Julia Lerman – Your problem certainly does not sound like software issue. If the battery is not charged with system turned off and AC connected you are looking at 3 possible problems in priority:
1. Battery
2. AC Adapter
3. Systemboard
Download and run the PC-Doctor from the following link:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-56222
Burn the image and boot from it; in here you have many functions to test as well as your battery. When you are in PC-Doctor under the “Utilities” menu there is a function called “Battery Rundown” (Unless this new version of PC-Doctor has changed something), run this function and let me know what that does for you.
Ultimately I do believe you need to open a service call for your machine, in your particular case it sounds like you have a hardware failure.
——————–
IlyaK – You have the same symptoms as the service call I am dealing with now, here is an action plan for you:
1. Check to make sure your battery is not re-called by visiting (There have been 2 battery re-calls so far):
http://www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram
2. If your battery is not in the list, I strongly recommend you to try reinstalling power management drivers and/or battery maximizer.
3. If that still doesn’t fix your problem, try and remember what you have installed/uninstalled recently software wise.
4. As I suggested before, try running WinPE or BartPE from CD-Rom and see if your symptoms go away. In the meantime I would call Lenovo and see if you can get yourself a re-image kit.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 5th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Julia Lerman – Your problem certainly does not sound like software issue. If the battery is not charged with system turned off and AC connected you are looking at 3 possible problems in priority:
1. Battery
2. AC Adapter
3. Systemboard
Download and run the PC-Doctor from the following link:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-56222
Burn the image and boot from it; in here you have many functions to test as well as your battery. When you are in PC-Doctor under the {Utilities} menu there is a function called {Battery Rundown} (Unless this new version of PC-Doctor has changed), run this function and let me know what that does for you.
Ultimately I do believe you need to open a service call for your machine, in your particular case it sounds like you have a hardware failure.
——————–
IlyaK – You have the same symptoms as the service call I am dealing with now, here is an action plan for you:
1. Check to make sure your battery is not re-called by visiting (There have been 2 battery re-calls so far):
http://www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram
2. If your battery is not in the list, I strongly recommend you to try reinstalling power management drivers and/or battery maximizer.
3. If that still doesn’t fix your problem, try and remember what you have installed/uninstalled recently software wise.
4. As I suggested before, try running WinPE or BartPE from CD-Rom and see if your symptoms go away. In the meantime I would call Lenovo and see if you can get yourself a re-image kit.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 5th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
It seems I am unable to post anything, my apologies if it shows as me posting multiple times.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Update… the new battery arrived. It charged up like a champ and is fine. I updated the BIOS on the computer. Turned it off, unplugged it and switched to the old batter which is giving me exactly the same grief … blinking status light, “plugged in, not charging” and “irreparable damage” status in the power manager.
So… the challenge will be to wait to see if this computer wrecks the new battery (and therefore it’s the computer) or if there was just something wrong with the old battery.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Julia Lerman – I was trying to post something before but for whatever reason they seem to not go through except that one post. Looks like you already found the issue, although I recommend downloading the latest PC-Doctor, under the “Utilities” menu there is a function called “Battery Rundown” (Unless this new version of PC-Doctor has changed), run this function on that old battery and see if that fixes the issue.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 6th, 2007 at 1:27 am
IlyaK – You have the same symptoms as the service call I am dealing with now, here is an action plan for you:
1. Check to make sure your battery is not re-called by visiting (There have been 2 battery re-calls so far)
[http://www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram]
2. If your battery is not in the list, I strongly recommend you to try reinstalling power management drivers and/or battery maximizer.
3. If that still doesn’t fix your problem, try and remember what you have installed/uninstalled recently software wise.
4. As I suggested before, try running WinPE or BartPE from CD-Rom and see if your symptoms go away. In the meantime I would call Lenovo and see if you can get yourself a re-image kit.
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 6th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Brad – IBM SSR
I’ve checked lenovo website and found out that my battery is recalled. (FRU92P1131)
Thank you very much!
June 6th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Hi, my battery suddenly died. It said “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” It was working well yesterday. I fully charged it yesterday. Then, use the battery for a while. Plugged in power at night to charge it. However, when I wake up this morning. I found that it didn’t charged at all. My battery is 0% charged now. It won’t charge anymore. I had this tablet for about a month only. How come battery died so suddenly and quickly?
June 6th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Hi ViS, what is ъоур battery manufacturer? Sanyo, Panasonic or Sony.
I have a similar problem (TP Z60t – Sanyo battery died after several hours work)
June 6th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Hi George, the battery is Sanyo.
On a side note, I will be going on an eight days trip tomorrow. I will be unable to respond until I am back but Thanks for all your help.
ViS
June 6th, 2007 at 10:55 am
By the way, I also tried to update bios, it doesn’t work because my battery is 0% charged. I also tried to run PC doctor, It said test fail. I am now clueless on what to do next.
Thanks for all your help.
June 6th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
ViS – please read the notes above your answer is there. It sounds like you may have a dead battery, check on the website and make sure your battery is not being re-called. Try re-seating the battery, call Lenovo and advise them of the error you received from PC-Doctor and create a service call.
http://www.lenovo.com/batteryprogram
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 7th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Thanks again Brad. I can only run Disk Doctor with the a/c adapter in or with the new battery, and the Battery Rundown test just went on and on. So I realize that it’s pointless unless I am using the bad battery and no a/c … which is not possible.
So, I finally am confident that the battery is just DOA and I called tech support and they are going to send me a replacement (as soon as one is available). He seemed pretty happy that I had done ALL of my homework so thanks for that (I definitely gave you credit!)
June 8th, 2007 at 3:15 am
I am glad everyone’s problems are sorted out. This particular blog is indexed through Google pretty well so I am confident that when someone searches for this specific issue they will find some sort of answer.
The user I was dealing with has confirmed that the battery issue went away after we did a re-image on the laptop and I am closing the service call for this particular customer.
Goodluck everyone, if you had urgent requests regarding problems or anything else related to Lenovo/IBM products you can reach me @: lenovo at telus.net
Brad
IBM SSR (System Services Representative)
June 11th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Hi everyone,
I’ve received the same “irreperable damage” message just this morning.
Machine: X60 6363-A7G (2 months old).
Tech-Support confirmed it has a Sanyo-Battery but it’s serial is currently not (yet) in the racall program.
Tech-Support also confirmed they will send replacement immediately..
BIOS is 1.08, so almost current.
To me it looks like the problem might be related to the battery supplier?
Regards
SaM
June 17th, 2007 at 7:18 am
I have the same problem with my out of warranty Z60T 7 cell Sanyo battery. Lenovo says the battery has not been recalled. Since there is no guarantee that if I buy a new battery it will be good, I kind of hope it spontaneously combusts and someone decides to start a class action.
June 19th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Hi,
My Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop battery is making a problem. my laptop getting shut down when still 33% of bettery remains. I am not getting any clue to solve this problem. If someone can help me please post a comment.
thanks.
June 20th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I’m having similar problems to what is described in this thread:
Thinkpad z60t
Sanyo 7 cell battery
Battery light flashing amber
However, power manager reports 100% charge
When I unplug AC, the machine shuts down.
Based on everything I’ve read it looks like I need a new battery (though I’m hesitant to do that since power manager seems to think the battery is just fine). Anyone have a recommendation on a reliable battery to get?
June 21st, 2007 at 4:05 am
Hi Glenn Aikens , Henry. My Z60t (2513-2gu) Sanyo 7-cell battery dead. I buy new Lenovo 4-cell Panasonic FRU 92P1123. with new battery the laptop is working good.
Also update BIOS to fresh version – old Sanyo battery not working again.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:04 am
Here is the battery information I can see from the power manager:
Status: No activity
Remaining percentage: 100%
Remaining time: -
Remaining capacity: 39.73 Wh
Full charge capacity: 39.91 Wh
Current: 0 A
Voltage: 15.59 V
Temperature: 23 C
Cycle count: 56
Design capacity: 65.52 Wh
Design voltage: 14.40 V
I’m not an electrical engineer, but I can tell that no current is a problem. Given this information, should I just replace the battery or does this point to a bigger problem with the laptop itself? Any help would be appreciated since I don’t want to lay out the money for a new battery and it still not work.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:50 am
It appears that the 7 cell extended life battery seems to be the problem. I’m gonna take the plunge and get an ultrabay battery that I can use for both my T60 and Z60. It’s really not worth the risk in buying another Z60 battery that Lenovo won’t take responsibility for.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I also have the Sanyo 7-cell battery and it has died with the same symptoms (55% charge, amber light, no power without AC). I decided I would get a new battery and went to the Lenivo web-site. Guess what….the 7-cell battery is not available (as in not even listed)
It looks to me like IBM/Lenovo knows there is a problem.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Well if that is the case, does anyone know where the best place to purchase a 4-cell battery is? I would order from Lenovo but they show a shipping date of 7-4-2007. And right now I don’t believe anything Lenovo says, not that I’m bitter or anything.
June 24th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Looks like we have another candidate… my Z61t (battery FRU 92P1121) that’s been on the shelf for a few months is showing the same symptoms as Julia Lerman’s. It’s not on the recall list, and the symptoms persist outside of any operating system. I’m going to download the PC Doctor ISO and see what it has to say before contacting tech support.
June 24th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Yep, nothing interesting from PC Doctor. More interestingly, all the support links from Lenovo are taking me to an IBM “page not found” message so I can’t even check all my warranty info before calling. There’s a small “500 Internal Server Error” note at the bottom of the page suggesting the server’s having issues. Arrgh.
June 25th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Hi
I am using Lenovo notebook. here is my system details
Product: 3000 N100 0768-59G [change]
Operating system: Windows XP [change]
Original description: T2400(1.83GHz), 1GB RAM, 100GB 5400rpm HD, 15.4in 1680×1050 LCD, 128MB nVIDIA GeForce FX Go7300, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Bluetooth/Modem, 10/100 Ethernet, IEEE 1394, Fingerprint reader, Camera, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Home
Currently i am having battery recharge problem. As it is working fine on AC power but battery is not charging.I have tested for battery recall but lenove says it is not required for recall.
For trouble shooting I download Battery Maximiser and when try to install it Error occurs saying ” CAN NOT RUN ON THIS SYSTEM”. I don’t know why it’s happening. Also when I try to install Thinkpad configuration tool it says same error. Can you please help me out as it is a very serious matter at the moment.
I have try to recharge new battery with my system and yet it’s not recharging new one. Battery bulb flicks as red for 4 ,5 time and then it shut down. System is working fine on AC power supply but not charging the battery.
My battery is out of warranty.
Please guide what should I do to sort this out.
June 29th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Hi —
Yet another entry to the symptom list, may or may not be related. Battery (and rest of system) working great yesterday. This morning, plugged in unit, and battery light began blinking amber (low voltage). Powered up and ran for several hours. Unplugged AC and unit completely stopped working (insufficient battery power, even to hibernate).
Now here’s the fun part: gauge reads 100%; Voltage is 11.68V. So it’s low in voltage but refusing to charge. Fine, we’ll reset the gauge. But pressing “Reset power gauge” causes the computer to immediately reboot!
Updated the power manager software and only *then* got the “irreparable damage” message. I’m fairly confident the damage is neither the anode nor the cathode of the battery — it’s the internal inconsistency between the 100% gauge and the voltage, as expressed inside the battery’s smart charger unit. Sadly, I don’t know how to reset that, or rather how to force that to reset when the Power Manager’s tool causes a sudden reboot. Would be happy if someone knew how to tell the smart charger “forget what you think you know, become a dumb battery again.”
Any thoughts appreciated, or at the least, want to thank the Lenovo people for keeping an eye on this thread and trying to integrate all the varied data points.
June 29th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Identical failure to Scott McDermott’s experience, happened while on the road with occasional battery operation, but usually AC. Recalibrated battery meter and get only red X on status bar. Z60t with 7-cell battery. Still trying to figure out how to proceed. Now 1 year 3 mos from purchased new.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:25 am
Looks like I am lucky, my warranty doesn’t expire for another couple of months. Unfortunately Lenovo refuses to send out a standard battery and will only send out an extended life battery. Does anyone know if the new battery will have a full year warranty or will it be the remainder of the factory warranty?
July 9th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Hi everyone,
If you are showing problems like those described above with the “irreparable damage” messages, please visit this website for instructions on how to determine if you have a problem and how to get it fixed.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
I must say that I am very glad that Lenovo has listened and taken care of its users. Even though I am no longer effected by the problem, I have no hesitation in recommending Lenovo to my friends again.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I installed the new version of the Power Manager by using the system update but the battery maintenance still does not seem to work.
I sent the bottom threshold to 30% but it right now charge even when it is in nineties.
Any help!!!!!
July 24th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I have a Thinkpad Z60m that is out of warranty that suddenly received the “irreparable damage”. I woke up one morning and the amber light was blinking.
I open the battery manager and the battery had somewhat of a charge about 50%, but then I ran battery reset and every since then the battery shows 0% and system shuts down if I pull the AC adapter off.
Thinking that it was the battery I bought a new 9 cell battery and when I put that in I got the same issue. I got Lenovo to send me a new battery but never got to test it because Lenovo sent me the wrong battery twice, finally the third time they said they corrected the wrong part from shipping but the package has been lost by DHL. So I was never able to test a battery directly from Lenovo.
My issue on my system happens also when the computer is turn off, the battery will not charged. So now after reading all these posts I don’t know if it’s a software issue or a hardware issue. I’m going to try the PC doctor image and see what happens.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Today, while running my T60 (purchased February 2007) on battery power, I received several of the “battery error is detected” and “irreparable damage” messages.
I went to the battery verification tool as mentioned in this thread, but apparently since the battery hasn’t failed, Leonovo isn’t going to do anything.
The battery charged back to 100% without any problems.
Is there anything I should do now or just wait until it does fail?
Sheri
July 31st, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Great blog! What a find!
Maybe someone can help me here with my T43p (2687D5U)
After another update (System Update 3) I had a major system crash and had to reinstall WinXP clean… Not sure what happened, but one of the updates installed was the power manader…
After this, I was very selective on loading all this IBM/Lenovo apps… Have not loaded the Power manger yet, but wondering of its advantages over tiny managers such as RightMark Utility, SpeedswitchXP, or similar…
QUESTION:
What is the advantage of IBM Power Manager other than a more accurate battery meter? All these little apps have the same and more with a much smaller footprint…
The idea is not to overclock the CPU or undervolt it causing problems, just keep it in Dynamic switching mode on AC and either Dynamic or Max Battery mode on battery for extra life.
What if I have no PowerManager installed at all? BIOS + OS will still manage it the same way, won’t they? (granted no nice battery icon
Will IBM/Lenovo Power manager do any better on battery life than BIOS+OS?
Thanks to whoever has any insight into this for an uninitiated into computers civil engineer…
July 31st, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Today the battery of my new X61s has gone down the drain as described by others above. All of a sudden, the system has irreversibly started to behave as if no battery was inserted. It shuts down ungracefully whenever the plug is pulled, and shows “irreparable damage” to the battery.
What I find totally unnerving, is that the “lenovobatteryreplacementpackage.exe” pretends that there is no damage to the battery (and hence Lenovo isn’t going to do squat about it). But there is unquestionably something very, very wrong with the battery! Hey Lenovo guys, is that your way of telling me that I am imagining things???
I have been a faithful Thinkpad buyer for a decade. However, the trouble I am going through with the current X61s is just unbelievable, and may change my buying habits. I will certainly be losing numerous work hours if I can’t work unplugged. And from what I seem to understand, buying a replacement battery isn’t going to help – or what???
This battery issue is testing my patience – big time. I feel like throwing the X61s at some Lenovo rep…
July 31st, 2007 at 10:45 pm
AdrianoA,
I’m sorry to hear that. Rest assured that the problem will be covered under your warranty. Please give your local service center a call and they should take care of you!
August 14th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Same bug for me here – but reverting to an older version of power manager and ACPI power mgmt driver (1.15 and 1.33) seems to produce this error once every several hours instead of one or two times every hour. Removing power manager altogether seems to reduce the errors too – but power manager is an applet that I actually like, so not much of an idea removing it from my x60s.
Brad (IBM SSR) suggests reimaging, in the above thread. But lenovo india support is horribly clueless (I’m from India, and I run ISP helpdesks for a living, for a decade ++, and the clue level in lenovo india is markedly less than the clue I get when calling Lenovo in Atlanta). And they tell me the current image they have available is just the same image as I would get if I performed a system restore .. in other words, with system update 2, and several dozen MB worth of other thinkpad updates, plus about 150 mb worth of windows updates needed before the laptop becomes up to date .. and again the risk of breaking some driver or the other in the update process.
Sucks.
(What sucks even worse is that lenovo shipped me this laptop without the preinstalled Office SBS suite I’d paid for, and trying to get an install of Office out of them is like pulling teeth .. lenovo india took the time to reply to me with details of how I can download a free 30 day trial version of office 2007, something that I dont particularly need considering that I paid for an OEM license of office..).
Grr. Taking a brand that’s renowned for quality and support, and running it into the ground, is what is going on here ..
August 20th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Add my machine to the list. “Battery Critical Error” “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” Out of the blue this morning it popped up.
I’m a linux 99.99% of the time user. I decided to boot into Windows last week and update everything that Lenovo suggested. Now I have a bad battery ? Hmmm
100% charged according to the battery monitor.
But that nasty orange flashing led.
I’ve loved my Z60t. It would be a real shame to retire it so soon.
(Battery not covered by warranty – expired 01/2007) And not part of the recall either.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:19 pm
My problem is the battery acts completely dead but looks perfectly fine on the outside. In other words the Power Manager says that the battery is in “Good” condition and that it’s at 98% charge, but I can’t turn on the computer with the AC unplugged. And if the AC is already plugged in and I remove it, the laptop shuts off.
It’s about a year and 3 months old, so I’m out of warranty and possibly out of luck. The odd thing is it just happened, the battery was working just fine two days ago, and then I attempted to turn on my X41 without the AC today only to have it sit there.
Tried reseating, turned off the laptop and let it sit there for one minute to clear battery surge protector as suggested on the lenovo site, ran 2 different lenovo applications to check for recalled batteries AND those other “irreparable damage” batteries, and took out the battery and plugged in the ac (worked fine).
I would love to run PC-Doctor as Brad suggested but unfortunately I don’t have a CD drive or dock. I also don’t know anyone with a similar laptop so I’m stuck on that end too. Haven’t updated the bios because you need a fully charged battery which I do not have (don’t want to cause even more damage).
Important info: laptop is a X41 non-tablet 2525-c1u, battery is a Sanyo 92P1149 8-cell extended battery.
Help!
August 26th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
I am another victim of famous error “battery error is detected” and/or irreparable battery error has occurred. I am having this issue with my X60 and T60p, both purchased this year from Lenovo.
The batteries charge fine, they last the amount of time they are supposed to operate, however the messages are annoying.
I have 2 sets of batteries which I cycle often;the messages still appear in the message center.
In my opinion this problem may be related to the driver/software of the PM. It cannot be happening with 2 different brand new machines.
To make think worse, try to do a search in the Lenovo web site for the battery errors and you won’t get a hit.
We need to put pressure on Lenovo to fix this hidden issue.
rp
August 28th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Count me in too. I have a TP Z60t, and my battery warranty expired 14 days ago (just lucky I guess). I have the same blinking amber light and the 7-cell Sanyo battery.
If you are affected by this problem, GO TO http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-67765.
It looks like Lenovo is starting to address the problem. If your warranty expired within the last six months, you may be eligible for a free battery replacement. I’m not sure when mine will arrive, but be sure to check out the battery verification tool on this website before you go out and buy a new battery for yourself.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Power manager gauge located in taskbar do NOT show up correctly with Windows Vista Aero. Please fix.
With transparency enabled it is unreadable when there is anything non-black behing it.
With transparency disabled it is always unreadable.
I have also send a support inquery about this, but never get anything else than an automatic reply.
September 1st, 2007 at 10:09 am
Does anyone know why the power manager does not save / display any user-created power schemes? Also I’ve been having TONS of freezing problems with my T60p.
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Have just discovered this site and see how much help Brad from IBM has been (ie: blinking battery lights)
The other night I hit an FN key and NOT the little “light” for my laptop. I do not know what I hit the computer screen, I think, denoted Hibernation, then shut off. I re-booted. Ever since, the green battery light flashes yellow–even though the computer shows 100% charge.
(driving me nuts) Everything works–the battery indicator light never turns green now. Tried taking battery out–rebooting etc. Any new suggestions?
Thanks,
gail wolf
September 5th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I would like to second Jan (early post – way back, before the battery recall hit this discussion hard).
I’ve gotten this request from users at work and I think it makes a lot of sense. If I’m a big battery user, I’d much rather have one UltraBay battery and use it to provide a window for me to swap out another 6 or 9 cell battery than to drain the UltraBay first and be left with no method of swapping my main battery when it runs down.
There is a physical work around; if you release the UltraBay eject lever but do not pull out the battery it appears to reverse the order of use. There is also a work around for Linux users using the tp_smapi kernel module. Both are documented here.
The Linux solution would seem to prove that the capability is physically present. Simply adding the ability to select the primary battery to the ThinkPad Power Manager gui would be a great addition to the ThinkPad power management feature set.
September 8th, 2007 at 1:39 am
Removing power manager and leaving just the power management driver installed seems to minimize battery errors .. any free or paid alternatives to power manager that are still a bit more flexible than what Windows provides as a battery indicator + power scheme switcher?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:49 am
I have the latest T61 15.5 broadband with windows vista home premium 32 bits. As many other folks on this board I experienced multiple problems with Power manager. I set mine to stat charging at 5% and stop charging at 95% – sometimes it worked, more often did not. Sometimes Thinkpad power manager interface would be usable, more often it would not start at all.
I decided to remove Lenovo utilities, one at a time and see what happens. After I removed Access connections Power Manager started to work (did not fail a single time for 4 days now).
I realized I did not miss any of the utilities i removed, except for Thinklpad Hotkey Configuration that allows to use Thinkvantage key as well as shows speaker volume on the screen as you change it. So i installed Thinkpad HotKey config Utility again, after install Power Manager still functioning, but battery gauge shows “no battery found” ….. alll other power management functions work properly, so I just disabled the Thinkpad gauge and use the standard Vista icon.
September 13th, 2007 at 12:05 am
This hotfix popped up today in system update, something about incorrect battery status etc.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889816/
quote:
Consider the following scenario: You change the batteries on a portable computer that is in hibernation or in a suspended state, and then you resume the computer. In this scenario, one or more of the following symptoms may occur: • The information that is displayed on the Power Meter tab may be incorrect.
Specifically, information in the following categories on the Power Meter tab may be incorrect:• Chemistry
• Manufacturer
• Total battery power remaining
• The computer remains in low battery hibernation mode, even though the battery may be fully charged. The computer may then shut down because the operating system mistakenly interprets the battery power to be very low.
September 20th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I just want to post a huge THANK YOU to Kris Davis for his post from August 28th.
Like Kris, I have a TP Z60t that is about 1 year and 3 months old, and my battery gave an unexpected error. I had the same blinking amber light on my 7-cell battery.
I was lucky to see Kris’ post before buying a new battery. I followed Kris’ advice by going to http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-67765.
I tried the battery verification tool, but it said it couldn’t find my battery. It then asked for the serial number off of my battery. I typed it in, and it said that I was eligible for a new battery. I typed in my address, and expected to wait at least eight weeks for a new battery. Instead, it arrived via DHL the next day!
I’m so used to horrible customer service from hardware providers that I’m almost speechless from this great customer service experience from Lenovo.
Definitely follow Kris’ advice before you buy a new battery. It saved me about $100.
September 21st, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I just had the “Irreparable damage” incident on my own Z60m. It appears that this incident is known to Lenovo (maybe because of you guys) and there is a list of batteries that are replaced. Fortunately mine is one of these too and I placed my shipping order.
More details here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-67765
September 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I have a new X60. It has 64bit Vista Enterprise, and the latest drivers/updates. ( Thinkpad system update and Windows update say it has all the updates).
The X60 freezes numerous times during suspend/resume or docking/undocking. In addition, evey time PowerManager starts, it creates about 10 more powerplans, and the computer now shows 100s of power plans. (The power plan settings in control panel says the administrator has set some policy to control power settings).
Anyone else facing similiar poblems with X60? Any ideas of how to solve them.
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:47 am
Wow – Same problem exactly as Tony V. and Kris Davis with my Z60t. No battery power, flashing yellow battery light on display, yet battery indicator shows 100%. Interestingly, my Z60t is nearly exactly the same vintage (1 yr and 3 mos), and this post is within weeks of both Tony’s and Kris’s. Wonder how many others will have this problem in the coming days/weeks….or how many already have had it?
I used your link….link didn’t work for me, but I searched on MIGR-67765 in the search box and it took me to the right page. Battery verification tool worked great, and it allowed me to place an order for a new battery. Hopefully I get the same quick delivery as Tony V. Will update this site when I receive the new battery.
Thank god for you guys and Google (Search: ‘Thinkpad flashing battery light’)!!
October 11th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Today my X60 battery is dead after 1 year and 2 months and Lenovo battery verification tool is saying I am not eligible for replacement. This sucks. I dont know why did I pay $2200 for this piece of junk if this is the service that lenovo offers. Please suggest should i buy a new battery and the problem will be fixed or take it to lenovo customer support.
Thanks
October 14th, 2007 at 3:38 am
I got the Dread Message a few days ago: “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” During the summer, my X60s started fussing about the battery power manager, and advised me to change my power scheme, and then there was one error message, but I assumed that the battery was weaker but still usuable. I rarely use the battery power, which was not a good way for maintaining battery life, I know.
I ordered a new battery. Question: is there any danger to the machine if I keep using it on AC in the meantime?
Also….my X60s was bought in July 2006. Others have reported problems with machines bought at that time. Coincidence??
October 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
David – There is no danger in using the machine on AC only, simply remove the battery until your replacement arrives. If you are just purchased a new battery, I would highly recommend finding a local battery recycling program as Lithium-Ion batteries need to be disposed of properly.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Thanks to Kris, Tony and Bryan! My Z60T is experiencing the blinking yellow battery light. The Thinkpad is the same vintage as all or yours. (I hope another problems goes away – on powering up it sometimes sounds like the hard drive is grinding.)
Bryan – thanks for the clarification on the search criteria. Got to the site and ordered the replacement battery.
I appreciate that each of you took the time to write in the blog.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
I downloaded the latest power management drivers, V1.19, for a T60P and I have experienced the following:
1. All but one of my power schemes were lost
2. I can attempt to define power schemes but they are never saved and are not available for use
3. I can attempt to choose from the existing power schemes but it always reverts back to the top one in the list.
Anyone know how I can get a back level version of the power management utilities?
October 20th, 2007 at 5:21 am
I have a few suggestions for Power Manager (PM) for Vista. First of all, the battery icon by the system tray reacts to both Vista’s transparency and color settings. With most default settings (except the black one, ’smoke’, I believe), there is almost no contrast between battery background and the text on it, which makes it totally useless. I made a screenshot to illustrate the problem: http://www.image-load.eu/out.p.....anager.png
Please make all PM icons opaque and independent from Vista UI settings!
I’m using the german version of PM, and the translation is, to say it politely, confusing. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to care less about the translation of Vista than they did about XP’s, which resulted in a quite rough and sometimes outright nonsensical translation. I consider myself an educated computer user and somewhat capable of speaking english, but even by trying to translate back to english I couldn’t guess what some of Vista’s settings mean.
The energy profiles (I’m sorry I’m guessing the names here because I’m using the german version of Vista and don’t know the english labels) are a great example. In XP, the labels were simple:
Standby was Standby
Hibernation was “Ruhezustand” (“resting state”)
In Vista, things have changed:
Standby is “Energie sparen” (“save energy”)
Hibernation is “Ruhezustand” (“resting state”)
This two are ambiguous already.
Now, the Power Manager introduces yet another set of labels:
Standby is “Ruhemodus” (“resting mode”)
Hibernation is “Hibernationsmodus” (“Hiber…” well, you get the picture.)
I think it has become clear that those different kinds of labels are confusing even to the experienced user. Someone less technophile would be overwhelmed, I’m sure.
My suggestion is to stick with Microsoft’s translation, even if that one’s suboptimal too; better to have a consistent, if bad system than not adhere to any naming conventions at all.
October 20th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Here’s a screenshot illustrating the translation problem. http://www.image-load.eu/out.php/i7291_pwrman.png
Add the fact that people are already used to S3 being “Standby-Modus” in XP, and the confusion is perfect.
The “Betriebsspannungsschalter im Menü Start” (Power Button in Start Menu) apparently uses the System’s labels (via variables?), but everywhere else things are translated differently.
By the way, I’ve never heard the word “Betriebsspannungsschalter”. Microsoft (rightfully) uses the word “Netzschalter”.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not just a minor inconvenience I’m being nitpicky about. People with little computer experience will have severe problems identifying the different System Power States, especially with Vista changing many of XP’s labels.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I definitely like the customizability features of Thinkpad PM. I like all the options and find myself checking it a lot just out of curiosity (boredom?). However, I do think that there are some things that PM should do that it doesn’t.
First, I need very long battery life, so I use a 9 cell battery in the main battery bay and an ultrabay battery at all times. Under this scheme, PM always charges the main battery all the way to 100%, then begins to charge the ultrabay battery. IMHO, the main battery should be charged to about 70%, then the ultrabay to about 70%, then fully charge the main battery, followed by the ultrabay. This would allow the overall battery power to reach a higher overall charge (by Whr) faster, as the last 30% or so is designed to charge at very low wattage.
Another thing that seems like an easy fix that would greatly increase longevity of the ultrabay battery is creating a point where the power drain would switch to the main battery. In the current scheme, the ultrabay battery is FULLY drained before switching over to the main battery. Here, the ultrabay battery sits in the worst possible state for extended periods of time, significantly decreasing its longevity. This seems like a problem Lenovo would be very interested in fixing, as they have replaced this battery under warranty three times in its 1-year warranty period, as well as the batteries of many of my colleagues.
PM is a great system in most every aspect when using only 1 battery. However, these problems make it less than optimal in a 2 battery setup. Is there some setting that I have missed? Can I fix these things under the current PM version? If not, is there some other reason that these settings are the way they are?
October 31st, 2007 at 3:11 pm
You talk about topping off being very bad for batteries.
I have a thinkpad x60 and the battery just died… I normally leave it plugged in all the time, even off. But for the past three nights I turned off the surge protector after shutting the laptop down and the battery instantly died. I called IBM/Lenovo and they are sending me a new one.
But I’m wondering about what the topping off. This: http://www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm
says that topping off is better than discharging a lot and that’s what I have heard. They say something about depth of discharge. There seem to be a lot of conflicting opinions and I don’t see why this is all so complicated. Also Lenovo’s claim of the X60 running for 11 hours… with the extended battery, I get almost 4 hours!!! and that’s on low power usage settings. With the normal battery (i.e., the one that died that they are sending me a replacement), I was getting almost two hours.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
The battery information provided by Power Manager can be very useful for system administrators. Is there any way to pull this information programmatically, either via a command-line utility or a .mof file for WMI access?
November 15th, 2007 at 5:14 am
I’m reluctantly leaving the Power Manager installed on my T60, but I wish Lenovo would make a smaller version of the icon available! That battery gauge takes up way too much space. I tend to run with a ‘double height’ task bar to fit two rows of task icons on it, but the battery gauge simply eats up the full height – lots of wasted space above and below. Not only is the battery image itself too large, but then to add insult to injury, they put the separate ‘plug’ icon next to it when charging! There should at least be an option to have a mini version that you can hover over to get more details about! Every other icon from other vendors seems to be able to conform to the size constraint … why not the battery guage?
November 27th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
My battery worked perfectly yesterday, I usually run in linux, and did a system update last night, and went to bed…perfectly fine working battery. Woke up this morning and noticed that the battery light was flashing amber, and my powermanager said “battery not present”…… i unplugged the AC cord, and indeed, my laptop thought the battery wasn’t present, and cut off. I removed and inserted the battery several times with and without the AC cable, and the amber light was still flashing without even booting the computer… so i booted anyway into linux, and it said…. battery 100% charged….unplugged and it cut off. I then booted into a little Win2k partition, looked at the thinkpad power manager, and it also says 100% charged, although it also says:
A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery.
65W AC adapter is attached.
Ok, what is the solution to this?….. can i update the BIOS?….doubt its a BIOS problem.. is it a battery problem…if so is there anyway i can reset the battery…or is it a connection problem…. don’t think my battery is under warranty, and i’m not about to pay for a new one when this is such a common problem, and an obviously flawed product
I’m guessing the most likely solution is that i’m going to end up calling lenovo and getting a new battery…… dammit
December 4th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Cool, a hardware-based capacity meter right at the desktop.
Would charging rate (while operating) improve going from the 65W to 90W AC adapter? Where’s the DC-mode of the AC/DC travel adapter fit in- same or better than the 90W AC-only brick?
Providing optimum electr./environ. conditions for max charging current (capped), would the 90W capability be overkill even under worse-case tablett/device current draw (all USB ports sourcing 500ma, DVD-a-burning, etc.)?
My application is an x61 tablet 7764CTO w/ SXGA and 8-cell, operating in X6 UltraBase … with a geek-fest full of USB-powered drives, cams, fans, lights, and the ever-strange tush warmer.
Speaking of static USB current usage, is the on-board management chip just considering (compute) “processing load” or total current/predicted loads (at all the power rails) when indicating estimated time for complete charge?
There’s two battery sizes, 3 bricks, a 40Y7625 battery charger, and close to an hour mid-day between class to charge. Hmmmm …
Great resource! Thanks!
December 4th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
New Tablet User – all great questions. I’m curious to the answer of some of those myself and am looking into it, but can’t say when/if I’ll get detailed answers
Looking at this very unscientifically, I just unplugged my X60T in UltraBase and Power Manager showed between 20-25W draw on the battery. I think you’d have to be running some serious accessories off the USB ports to draw much more power, and likely nowhere near 90W. Now take a system with discrete graphics, particularly a T6xp model with high powered graphics, and if you’re maxing out the CPU & GPU I’m sure you come close to the 90W rating.
BTW if you haven’t been over yet, check out our forums at http://forums.lenovo.com. I’m sure others there would be interested to continue this conversation.
December 11th, 2007 at 4:26 am
I have Lenovo notebook 3000 N100, I’m having problem with the Battery status. It is operatable but the problem i’m having right now is if i trun of the computer with ac power it shows the battery in charging state and when i remove the ac power it is suppose to show that the laptop is running on the batter power but instead of that it is showing that the battery is being charged. Is there any solution for this problem.
December 11th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
So any update on the Power Manager not respecting charging thresholds problem? It’s been almost a year since people first started reporting about this issue.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I have a R61i, and with standard install under XP SP2 and after an update of all Thinkvantage software (everything installed), the process explorer.exe freezes after every 3rd or 4th restart if the gauge bar is shown in the taskbar…many others have this problem too. Disabling the gauge bar to show up solves the problem…but i can’t live without it:-)) SEE: http://forum.thinkpads.com/vie.....cff43640ff
January 7th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
I have a T60. Post the bios update to resolve the “resolution change on closing lid” problem and System Update , the maximum battery charge was now displaying as 22% . This change was overnight. Then performed a gauge reset to check if there was a problem. Now it showed 20% and then after a couple of restarts, the dreaded “A Battery error has occurred. The Battery cannot be charged. Replace the Battery” error message comes up.
My battery is not on the recall list. It has been just over 12 months and I am not gonna be able to get a replacement on this as it is out of warranty.
Is there anything that i am missing out on. I have also reinstalled the Power Management Driver and the Power Manager. I dont want this notebook to chew up another battery. Is there a solution for this ?
January 11th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
What is the best support number to call for the battery issue?
I now have two batteries that have been reported as “Dead” but are only a couple of months old.
One is the original 8 cell battery I ordered with my X60 Tablet.
I sat on the phone for two hours waiting for a representative on one number so I think I’m using the wrong tech support number.
Help!
January 14th, 2008 at 1:38 am
So I went back to Power Manager v1.16, but it STILL insists on charging my battery, even though the battery is at 76% and I’ve told it to charge ONLY when below 35%. WTF? What a POS. Power Manager on my T42 never exhibited such behavior.
January 14th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Sterling – you can find the list of tech support numbers here.
January 17th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Well, my X60s (bought refurb in Feb 06 ) just hit me with the “irrepairable damage” message and the blinking yellow light. Called Lenovo and IBM support, both basically told me to shove off since we are outside of the 6 month warranty. Any ideas besides paying $150 for a new 8-cell battery?
January 18th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Brad – have you put your battery information into this tool here?
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-67765
January 19th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Hot dang, I went to that site and the first thing I did was enter the batter serial number and of course it told me my battery was not part of the recall. It was not until the next day I went again and realized there was that first link and after running that verification program it put me to an order form for a new battery! Heres hoping they send us a new one, I really don’t want to shell out so much $ for a replacement.
Thanks!
January 31st, 2008 at 11:23 am
Same story as Brad, my battery failed this morning. But thanks to Tim, I was able to get a replacement on the way. Won’t help me while right now while I’m out of town, but it’s better than paying for a replacement!
Thanks Tim!
February 4th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Well, 2 weeks later and so far no replacement battery. I called Lenovo a week ago and they had no record of the transaction because it was ordered through the replacement page and not the actual shopping site. I talked to 4 people over 45 min and no one could find anything on the order from my name, address, or email. Since it’s been another week I am going to call again today. If they can’t find anything I’ll go back to the site and try and re-order again.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Ok, last update from me. Lenovo came through and I received the new battery yesterday. It had a shipdate of 2/5/08 so they shipped it express, just two weeks after I ordered it. I assume there was stock issues or something along those lines. Everything is working now and my wife appreciates having a laptop that is again portable.
thanks!
February 19th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Well..I have the same problem. After doing a google search I found this page out
and I just got the same error msg saying I could not charge my battery and to get a new one.
I called them and they are sending a new one, this sucks though, I JUST got the laptop last
week and this happened out of the blue. What sucks even more is I bashed dell so bad
and a few days into owning my 2nd t series, it kicks the bucket. Ugh…
February 25th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I love the green battery icon on the taskbar. The problem that I have is that it disappeared a while back and nothing I have done including re-loading the power management software has brought it back. I depend on the battery icon and miss it. Can anyone help me get it back? Thanks!
February 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Yeah, when you restart explorer.exe, the task bar icon disappears. I’ve been trying to find how to reload it – anyone know?
March 4th, 2008 at 10:00 am
My tablet battery also gives “Irreparable error message” and it has not been recalled as I cheked on the website and its warranty just expired in Feb08. What should I do???
Shikha
March 6th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Same problem happens to me..”Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. ” And it has not been recalled. It is warranty expired. Is there any other way I can save my computer back to portable？
March 10th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I just bought a brand new IBM batteyr for my older A20M as it’s original was only giving me about 10-20 minutes. I cannot seem to get the new battery calibrated to the battery gauge. I charged it when I first received it. I cycled it once based on recomendations but it still starts up at 95-98% when windows starts and within 3-5 minutes drops to 3-6% and shuts down. If I reset power management to disable all timers I can get over an hour before the system just shuts off. Frankly I don’t know what to do next. I know it’s an older laptop but it has been gent;ly treated and does everything I need at the moment. I just need the battery to work. ANy suggestions appreciated. I’ve tried some of the suggestions from earlier in this discussion with no success. The battery condition shows good.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I got the same error a week ago on my 9-month x61. the warranty has apparently already expired.
have you managed to solve it?
March 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Having “Irreparable damage” notice.
My serial number is not on the list.
And mine battery is 18 months old.
Anything I can do?
March 24th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
“Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.”
Any suggestions? what should I do?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
X60T, 1st battery dead with in 1 year, got replaced by Lenovo.
2nd battery from Lenovo: A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery.
online battery show battery without any errors.
warranty expires on 2010, but battery is not covered??? what the hack..
March 25th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
wil – batteries are only covered by a one-year warranty. this is the industry standard. batteries are a wear item and not everyone takes care of them like they should.
March 26th, 2008 at 9:29 am
This is a cool utility. Thanks.
BUT…I’m having a goofy problem with the battery on my T60. I just replaced it with a new one, charged it up, but it only runs on battery for about 10 minutes then shuts down with no warning whatsoever. I then ordered another batter, thinking the first one was bad, but same problem. Any help?
April 13th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Add my battery to the “irreparable” list. I have an X60, and the other day I was working with it not plugged in. Out of the blue, without any warning about the remaining battery life, the machine shuts down spontaneously. I frankly don’t know what the remaining life was when this happened. When I tried to reboot it, it wouldn’t, then I plugged it in and rebooted, which worked, and the battery was down 4% (it has since come down to 3%) and when I drag the mouse over the battery icon, it says “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” Also no matter how long I leave it plugged in, the battery is not recharging. Any suggestions?
April 21st, 2008 at 7:46 am
when i open my laptop, the system says
” power manager gauge
an error occured while loading resource DLL”
canyou tell me how could i solve the problem.
thanks
April 25th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
My z60t is about 3-4 months out of warranty. Prior to warranty expiration it was serviced because the laptop was overheating but the battery was fine. So last week my z60t battery light started flashing after I plug the (Sanyo) battery in to recharge one night. It is not charging any more and the light just keeps flashing, but the battery gauge says the battery is ok. However it shows the current is at 0.0A. I used the utility and it says my battery is fine. What can I do? I need help!!
May 8th, 2008 at 8:46 am
hi
one more victim here i have T60, my battery status shows “plugged in, not charging”. wot kind of battery ibm is giving. i bought my laptop just one year back, and this problem came.
what a bullshit battery ibm is giving after taking heavy price. i have spent S$2800 (singapore dollar) on it. if i would have bought other laptop i would have spent less. may be S$ 1000 less and would have got better system than this.
wots the meaning in putting huge amount for such a bullshit laptop.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Another case of:
flashing orange light
Battery charge indicator stuck at 66%
Battery utility shows no current going/coming:
Status: No Activity
Remaining Percentage: 66%
Remaining Time: -
Remaining Capacity: 24.01 Wh
Full Charge Capacity: 36.84 Wh
Current: -
Voltage: -
Temperature: 30C
Cycle Count: 197
Machine doesn’t work on battery power, only on AC
Little Lenovo utility tells me I’m not eligible for a new battery
What now?
Thanks in advance for any help. This thread has been very useful and I appreciate having the battery utility to help see what’s going on.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:42 pm
[...] penyebabnya dan secara tidak sengaja search via Google ketemu dengan artikel yang membahas tentang Power Manager di ThinkPad. Di bagian comment-nya juga banyak yang mempunyai masalah yang sama dengan saya. [...]
June 10th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Regarding the “battery error has occurred” etc. errors:
It turns out that some batteries are eligible for replacement. These batteries are *not* one of the two large recalls, and you need to download a separate tool (released 25 February, 2008) to determine if yours is affected by this problem. Mine was affected and I am being shipped a new battery free of charge. The page even apologized for the inconvenience…!
URL: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....67765.html
Title: “ThinkPad battery will not charge or discharge and gives an “irreparable damage” or “battery cannot be charged” error message”
June 25th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad, and my battery is from 2007. The PowerManager shows that my battery is in good condition. However, a few days, some water was spilled on my keyboard, and since then I have been having some problems with charging my battery. When my laptop is plugged into the AC adaptor, the battery stays charged at it’s current level (like 86%), but it will not charge any more than this. If i disconnect my computer, the charge will go down a percentage, but will never regain the charge that it lost. It’s not a major problem now, but eventually it will be. In the PowerManager, it does not show remaining time left til fully charged, and under Battery Maintenance I am not able to set it to charge when it falls below 100%. Does anyone have any advice?
July 25th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I have a similar problem… X60 laptop with irreparable damage error that appeared suddenly, even though just yesterday my battery was in “good” condition. The link provided for the “battery verification tool”, of course, tells me that the page cannot be found: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-68298
even when i search the lenovo website for a “battery verification tool”, every link tells me “this page cannot be found.”
anyone have any other ideas?
July 25th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
is lenovo updating their website or something right now? every single link under the “support and downloads” page cannot be found!! how much more frustrating could the customer support possibly be….
July 25th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Elena, I am having the SAME exact problem, but figured I needed a new battery.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I have a 1 year old X61 and have a similar battery problem. From one day having a battery which works perfectly well to the next day having the Power Manager indicate 0% and the “irreparable damage” ,”Battery error has occured. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery” messages. I have reset the battry
I have run the “battery verification tool” downloaded from the lenovo site (no problem with the link by the way) but it tells me my battery is not eligible for replacement.
I proceded to uninstall Power Manager but am having trouble finding the link to download files for re-installing.
Any suggestions of what more I might try? If I buy a new battery, will it even work?
July 29th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I just wanted to say thank you for putting this information on the blog (about the ‘irreparable damage’). I actually called Lenovo/IBM tech support to describe the symptom, more than three months ago, and were told by them that essentially I should expect no help since battery warranties are short – nothing about the existence of a battery verification tool, nothing about battery recalls. I was so disappointed – I always buy IBM, and now Lenovo, because my experience with their laptops and service has been entirely positive, and this was the first time that I’d had an experience like this with them.
The ‘help’lines have to start being more forthcoming about this sort of thing, because the quality of the tech service is part of why we buy IBM/Lenovo *frown frown* but I was very happy when I tried the tool with the damaged battery and it enabled me to request a replacement! Now, the only question is whether it arrives
August 13th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Another victim here (x60 model 1709-7HU, with 3 year old 8 cell extended battery).
Everything worked fine throughout the day on battery and docking station. When I unplugged form the dock, I shut down the laptop. When I booted (on AC) up the battery light started to blink orange. The battery status shows Fully Charged 100%, “Irreparable Damage” message is showing and the laptop goes dead when AC is disconnected. According to the IBM tool (25 February, 2008 version), the battery is not affected by any of the recalls.
I’m running a ThinkVantage System Update now to see if that will change anything. It seems very much like all the problems reported in 2008 above, and also like the problem that Julia Lerman (see above) had in June 2007.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Dead as a doornail. Updated Power Manager says: “A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery. 65W AC adapter is attached.”
Has anyone bought a spare battery from sources other than Lenovo/IBM? Any thoughts on buying from Replacement Power store? (half the price of Lenovo!)
http://www.replacementpower.co.....agodBH8agw
or eBay?
thanks.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
That’s all great, I have my limits set to 40% and 85% as suggested by the ThinkWiki. However having such a large threshold means that sometimes I’d like to manually start charging and sometimes I’d even like to tell it to charge to 100%, but it’s something that the developers seem to have forgotten about.
I guess that my 40%/85% iss not really the intended use, and the 90%/100% or 85%/95% would be closer to it and that would just work automagically.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:44 am
I have found that the X60 battery error message with a flashing orange battery icon can be solved in my case using a 90 W adapter rather than a 65 w adapter, weird but true.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I have the same X60 battery issues everyone has described. Blinking orange battery indicator and the battery will not charge. Lenovo said I need to purchase another battery and will not provide a fix. Is anyone aware of some type of battery utilitie that will diagnose the real problem? Thanks
September 16th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I left my thinkpad X60s powered on overnight but unplugged, and it went into automatic standby when the power ran out. When I woke it up out of standby mode the battery status was on 1% with a blinking orange warning light for the battery status indicator. The battery refused to charge and remained at 1%; if I unplugged the laptop it would die. Just now I unplugged/removed my battery to read the voltage/output measurements so that I could buy the appropriate replacement. When I re-inserted the battery, it started to recharge! It is now up to 25%.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Issue: If the battery blinks orange (i.e., low battery) and refuses to charge when AC is plugged.
Solution: You can try:
shutdown the Thinkpad, unplug AC, unplug the battery, re-plug the battery, re-plug AC. It may fix your battery-not-charging problem.
Anyway, it works for me:)
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I have X61T purchased in july 2007. Same battery problem, blinking orange battery light and power manager says ‘replace the battery’. My FRU part number is 93P5032, not in the eligible list. I called the Lenovo Tech support, they told me they cannot help me, I needed to purchase a new one. Nothing guarantees that a brand new battery will work.
Waiting for a solution…
November 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Yesterday my battery also died.
I have a Lenovo X60s and it is now only 17 months old.
Always very careful with the battery and now suddenly dies and the blinking light on and the message “A battery error has occurred. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery”
I think this is unacceptable for a less than 2 years battery.
At Lenovo they say I have to buy a new one and is not accepted to be replaced for free (out of the replacement program).
Anyone discovered a solution? or the only solution is buy a new one.
Thanks
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:59 am
OK my turn…
Ive got a 4 or 5 month year old T61p… the battery was fine until about a month ago.
It’ll fully charge up and say i have about 3 hours left of charge. It’ll act pretty normal until it reaches about 80% charge, then the power manager gauge will jump down to almost nothing (4 or 5%) and give me the “plug in or you’re screwed” message…
Then when i plug it back in, it’ll give me an estimated time until fully charged of less than 20 minutes…with it being less than 10% charged…
Its a Sony battery…
My battery isnt up for recall. yet.
Thanks
November 24th, 2008 at 1:56 am
We need to start a class action law suit. My first battery was on the recall list and now the second battery (not on the recall list) which I’ve had for six months is dead. When I unplug the AC it turns off. I called Lenovo and they told me that since I didn’t save the receipt for the second battery I need to buy a new one. I’ve read that these batteries are programmed to stop working at a 12-month point from being made. This whole battery thing is unacceptable. There are many sites with people complaining of the same thing. Any attorneys out there who would like to take on a class action suit?
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:52 am
All lithium batteries will die after about 2 years or so after they are made, regardless of use. Unfortunately, that is the consequence of using lithium. Until battery technology gets better, we will continue to have this inconvenience.
December 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Add me to the long list of dead battery holders. Personally, I’m appaled with my experience with Lenovo today. I’m an IT consultant and I have grown to love TPads and loathe Dells. However, today I was given a wake up smack in the face. I purchased extended warranty for my X60 tablet but tech told me that it does not cover batteries.
When Dell and HP rip you off on extended warranty, at least they cover the battery. Lenovo does not. What pi$$ed me off even further is that tech told me that my battery was not elligible for replacement under neither warranty nor recall, as my S/N was not on the list.
I then googled the error message and came upon this site. Thanks to the link, I was able to find a page that did identify that my battery is elligible for recall. Now I guess I’ll just wait and see if they send a replacement.
I’m very disapointed in Lenovo for such a lousy handling of the call. If it weren’t for this site, I’d be spending extra $150 today. Thanks for great advise, my wallet is very grateful too.
December 25th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
My battery has also suffered the sudden-death.
It started to amber blink, even the PM says it is in fair condition, but 0%. It was 33% tomorrow.
Battery unplug didn’t help. When I connect to AC the amber light start to light for 3 seconds, next blinks about 3 or 4 times, no blink just light in the next 5 second, but lastly starts an infinity blinking.
It sounds terrible because my tablet is within 2 years age.
I will strongly consider this thing next time to decide if I by a Lenovo/IBM or NOT.
December 27th, 2008 at 10:00 am
This is really bad
My X61s is about 12 months old, and I’ve also got the infamous blinking light terror, no charge, etc. Discussed it with a colleague at tech-support at work, he said “my friend, this is built in with Lenovo” and laughed at me (meaning he has heard about this problem before). I cannot get a replacement. How can I even know if a new battery will solve this mess. It is just so confusing for a standard battery that gave me about 2 hours of work and worked so well. To me it looks like we are dealing with a deep manufacturing problem here. I think we should organize.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Don’t be ridiculous. As usual, you suffer from tech support hearing loss.
I can say a million times that my battery functioned around 4 hours of life for two years without any issues. Only. ONLY, after I decided to use the power management utility, during a sever lapse of judgement on my part, did it start having problems. First the charge it was able to hold went down considerably. Then shortly after it mysteriously died altogether. Giving me the blinking light BS and telling me it could no longer hold a charge!
This ‘block and tackle’ approach to customer service only works so long. Stop blaming customers for this ridiculous crap, and start looking at how you can improve.
1. You too have too much GARBAGE installed on your computers.
2. You need to take responsibility for your product quality or lack thereof. How dare you only offer replacements on defective batteries only for consumers whose battery was still under warranty. Maybe legal, but extremely unethical behavior on your part!
I bought my thinkpad t60t because of my previous experience with and overall reputation for durability which thinkpads had acquired. Don’t worry, I won’t make this same mistake again.
January 12th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
This is astounding. that Lenovo can let this go on. i have 3 batteries, two extended and 1 statndard. ALL 3 have gone the way of the “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected” message. I loved this laptop until this happened. And still would, if Lenovo would would step up and take of this. I am done them. I can’t reccomend that my peers or clients use Lenovo any more. This is the type of problem/customer handling that knocked Gateway out of the PC ‘best of’ list.
this is sad behavour.
January 17th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Even I am facing the same “Irreparable damage to battery has been detected ” problem. Mine is R61 and the battery was working very fine till a day ago. This thing is really making me sick. MY battery is not under warranty now and neither under recall. I think we must do something to make people aware of Lenovo’s Battery issue. Then only Lenovo will start using appropriate battery. I am for sure not going to recommend Lenovo laptop to any of my friend henceforth.
Please suggest me now which battery should I buy..
Thnx a lot in advance
January 30th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Same ish as everyone else. 1.5 year old T60p that suddenly needs batter replacement. I’m having a hard time following the huge list above…is there a solution are are we all boned? Lenovo is now in the sucky category imo bc of this issue. Love the overall product but this kind of ish and lack of response from them is a reputation killer. I will buy a Toshiba next time or, egad, even Dell before I consider another Lenovo. Thank you, Chinese communists!
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
We are a thinkpad shop with all developers using T60, T61 and T400. This is the first time I got this problem(sudden death). The battery in question is a replacement for my old one and it was bought in 11/07.
Based on all the 192 posts above, this must be a known issue which means Lenovo knows it but pretended to be a fool when we ask. I think this is a shameful even though many manufacturors do the same thing.
February 5th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Like many thousands of others, I am in the same boat using an x60s that has been used less than a few hundred hours. I am glad that my company is now offering Apple laptops in addition to the standard issue Lenovo. With the number of problems I have heard about with the T60, T61, etc., it is only a matter of time before they completely drop the Lenovo brand. It really seems like they have gone downhill….
Since I am on a rant, I also wonder what “value engineering” they implemented on their red pointer stick that is causing my finger to get numb from use. I also have and use some older T20 and T43P laptops with no issues. Not sure if they changed the stiffness of the pointer stick, plastic hardness, or ?? Maybe they just rid of their ergonomic group. I also notice that the placement of the processor on the X60s feels like it is located right under my right wrist.
All I can say is that I am positive that I will NEVER buy a Lenovo for personal use.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
T60-Same issue with blinking amber battery light *****BUT*****I have ordered and INSTALLED a brand new replacement battery, and the problem persists even with the new battery. Anyone else with this symptom, unresolved upon installation of a new battery?
February 5th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I found this post on another site, and have not tried it, but considering it would account for the brand new battery working, it may help some of you poor folk – Here ya go:
“I had the same problem. Maybe I’ve found a cheap, quick, easy solution.
The flashing orange light started with the original battery. I thought, “OK, I need a new battery,” although it seemed awfully premature.
My wife has the same laptop with an almost new battery. I tried her battery and the flashing continued.
I ordered a new “compatible” (non-Lenovo) battery and the flashing continued.
On Monday, I phoned Lenovo tech support. The rep guided me to some updated power management software. If the software didn’t work, the problem was likely the “system board,” he said, adding that the system board fix would cost nearly $500.
The software did not correct the problem.
The prospect of shelling out $500 makes me become very resourceful. I suspected all along that the various batteries weren’t making proper contact with the brass prongs sticking out the rear of the laptop. By pulling or tilting the battery I could sometimes get the charging light to go from blinking orange to solid green.
I found a rectangular piece of piece of clear plastic clinging to the back of the laptop above the contacts. The contacts are mounted in a dark plastiic plug.The clear plastic piece is about a half-inch long, 1/4 inches wide and less than an eighth of an inch thick.
I pried down the plastic plug so there was a gap above it and wedged in the clear plastic, lowering the contacts a few millimeters.
When I plugged my battery in, the light immediately went to green.
I prefer neater repairs than is. But what the heck was that clear plastic doing there in the first place. Did the manufacturer discover a misalignment with the battery contacts and stick on the clear plastic to fix the problem? Was the clear plastic wedged in originally as I have done, or simply placed above the contacts, as I found it? Was the plastic wedged in originally, knowing that this was a fix that was bound to fail?
I’m not particularly proud of the repair I made, but at least I’ve got a laptop with a rechargeable battery.”
-Hope this helps someone
February 11th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
The new power manager 1.51a (with the cutesy vista interface) has major major problems .. every so often it gets wedged so that the battery remains stuck displaying the same status even though it actually keeps draining, so you have a battery gauge that shows 98% full but the indicator light is blinking amber and double clicking power manager shows 10%
You cant even change power management profiles, or force the battery status monitor back to normal without a complete restart .. shutdown and restart power manager, or logout and login back again just dont work.
Horribly buggy, that .. the old power manager had the clunky old UI we know and love .. its now been “modernized” for vista and several functional bugs have cropped up. Is that a in 1.51a actually “alpha” by any chance?
Others seem to report this too – http://forum.thinkpads.com/vie.....66#p487266
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 am
I have also problem with original battery on T60, I tryied to wait two months with battery unplugged for totally uncharge, but it also didn’t work.. But a week ago I found interesting program for battery reset, may be it will help to reset that error on battery chip, did anyone tryied it ?
http://sbworkshop.com/
March 7th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I’ve been having the same problem as most everyone here. That “Irreparable damage to the battery has been detected. Replace the battery with a new one.” got to me, too. It also says, “Plugged in and not charging”, so it’s probably the battery problem.
I had ordered 2 other batteries strait from lenovo, but when they arrived, they didn’t even fit the frame area on the bottom of my X60 tablet, where the battery was supposed to fit. I am very puzzled–I had ordered the battery for the exact same model of computer for IBM and yet I didn’t even get the same SHAPE of battery. Is there a new Lenove Tablet PC X60 that has a new battery frame?
I’m just waiting for a real solution with results that will eliminate this problem–or else I guess I’ll just have to get another computer that doesn’t experience these problems. Mac should defentially come out with a tablet-soon
Denise
March 21st, 2009 at 10:34 pm
MY POWER MANAGER GUAGE AND THE ACTUAL BATTERY STATUS DISAGREE. THEY HAVE I WOULD HAVE TO GUESS SINCE I UPDATED TO THE NEW MANAGER SOFTWARE. ANYONE ELSE SEEING THIS? ANY FIX? I WANT THE GUAGE TO WORK AND NOT JUST TO TURN IT OFF.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:15 am
hello… I have laptop IBM ThinkPad z60t have this problem in batteries. that the charging batrai than 100% but when the cable cargger full even in death.
I bought this laptop on sale in 2007 for my friends. pleace help me
sorry my english not good.
thanks
March 30th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
My x61′S 8 cell battery went from GOOD condition to Poor condition in 1/2 day. This happened when I installed the new power manager and ran a battery reset. I have about 140 cycles and the battery is less than 12 months old. This was a replacement battery that Lenovo sent me because during one of my repairs they sent back a 4 cell battery by mistake, instead of my original 8 cell.
My understanding is that the power manager has limited the charge capacity of the battery because it thinks that there is something wrong with the battery, but physically there is nothing wrong (You can’t go from 68Wh down to 28Wh in one day, unless you destroyed 5 cells while running a LENOVO power manager reset… or can you??). This limit on the charge capacity then only allows the battery to be charged to the new but lowered capacity. Even my Vista’s battery gauge doesn’t agree with the power manager’s capacity.
Engineers at Lenovo, please look into this issue. I play with LiFEPO4 batteries on a daily basis and I seriously doubt that 5 cells can go into reversal in a single charge and discharge, unless of course the battery balancing system has issues. HMMMMMMMM….
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 am
my x61 tablet battery is not working after 1 year & 7 months. it has about 650 cycles on it.
even my 2001 dell battery would work at least 4 years. Dell doesnt even have battery management software like lenovo!!!. so it obvious that lenovo know this battery problem and comes up with their own software in order to sell more batteries in future. what a smart idea to rip off customers!!!!
my mistake was to throw away the batteries until I found this site.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....MIGR-67765
the other site was telling me that mine is not eligible for replacement ,but I havent checked this one yet. customer service didnt tell me to look at this new site. man im so mad now that I have to spend more money on new batteries.
plus if u look at th review the new x61 tablet batteries have 3 out of 5 stars and it shows that it will stop working less than 2 years
April 17th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Hi,
I have a T61 purchased 2007 Nov. It says “A battery error has occured. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery.” I have a 7-Cell ( battery for which I paid a premium. The battery only has 104 cycles on it and still retains more than half of its original capacity. The battery light turned amber and blinks. The computer wont work at all without power, not even for a second. I ran the “Battery Verification Tool” and it says i am not eligible. Right now my computer is about 1yr 6mnts old. Also the first day i got this computer my 6 Key on the keyboard came off. The display viewing angle is also awful, they dont list this but its expected to be >170 deg especially from the top. Lenovo has dipped in quality.
April 18th, 2009 at 10:36 am
got my x60 in mid 2007.
first battery reported an error after 10 (ten !) cycles.
now a new non-name replacement doesnt work at all.
coworker running a t60 is having very simillar issues.
tried multiple energy managers versions up to 1.54 and it doesnt make a difference.
i really doubt this is a prob of the battery at all but of the laptop itself and
its amazing how firmly lenovo manages to ignore it.
i really regret having given my old r40 away and it looks like the x60 will be my last thinkpad if the phone support / extended warranty will not solve it
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
T61p is less than 10 months old. Spent pretty much all of it’s short life in the dock. Pull it out, and the orange battery blink problem hits.
The old T41 and X60 I have are still running on their original batteries which are YEARS old. Not impressed with this Lenovo garbage at all…
June 19th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Have T60P and X61s and have the issue with battery life dramatically reduced and eventually going to a non-chargeable state with flashing amber battery lite. This is not a battery problem – we have many of these systems and change out batteries with no positive results. I put my good battery into another co-workers machine and his machine ‘killed’ my battery in one minute. Moving to HP or MAC ….
July 7th, 2009 at 11:50 am
WHY is the new power manager (for vista, v2.5) such a piece of crap?
* I can’t edit power profiles
* deleting a profile mixes up the whole list
* it applies settings randomly
why don’t you offer downloads of older versions? at least they worked!
please contact me.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Please provide older versions of Power Manager, this is getting ridiculous, I am SERIOUSLY considering selling my X61 and T61, this is RIDICULOUS. And enough with the advertisements in the software, I DON’T WANT TO PURCHASE A F*CKING BATTERY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 29th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Just installed a brand new battery today. Let it run down and it went into hiberation mode. Plugged in the charger, took it out of hibernation and had a “Battery error detected” message !!! This is the 3rd battery for this Z61m. After a while, and a number of “battery error” messages, I’m sure I’ll be getting the inevitable “Irreparable damage” message.
July 31st, 2009 at 9:00 am
I, too, will switch soon to other notebook companys. Probably Dell. From one day to another the battery is gone from 7h lasting to complete not usable. A cheap rebuy of an replacement battery from a no-name-company does not work at all – is not recognized by the notebook (like jaludwig already mentioned). I have the impression something on the notebook`s motherboard is damaged, probably the energy-contact which charges the battery. So buying a new lenovo battery won`t help. And even if it helped – the battery would be damaged in one year probably again.
I will not recommend Lenovo anymore.
August 12th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
You’re wrong about the battery life. Cycle life reduces dramatically with increased depth of discharge (its an exponential curve). Leaving the laptop plugged in all the time will keep the battery topped off. With lithium shelf life is also a concern, so even if you never use it, after a few years you’ll be down to something like 80% of its original capacity.
There is so much garbage information on batteries out there because of the weirdness of the NiCads from decades ago (those do need to be discharged fully periodically).
August 12th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
FYI regarding people having the battery issue… from what I’ve read elsewhere it seems like the battery management system on either the battery or the lappy gets into some state where it won’t charge batteries anymore.
I too removed this application because it kept nagging me to get a new battery and takes up too much room on the taskbar.
August 18th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I have an X60 1709. I bought a new battery for it which was in perfect condition (100% capacity) according to the power manager.
Then all of a sudden I’m getting the the ‘Irreparable damage’ message, the battery light flashes orange, my battery is always at 43% charged apparently and will not charge any more.
The power manager still says my battery is in good codition.
My battery type is 93P5027 (the batteries that are being recalled are 93P5028) i don’t know what the difference is apart from it being one number up, but apparently my battery is not part of the recall even though I’m getting the same problem.
I would really like to know what I can do….
August 27th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I have a X60 1709 too. Yesterday I got the irreparable damage message too. The battery can’t be used or charged. I called Lenovo, the guy just asked me to buy a new one. I’m an Electronics Engineer. I think it’s software issue!
August 28th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I run Linux, but I have a script to not let the battery’ s charge go above or below 25% and 85%. This is close to what the “optimize for battery lifespan” 2 days ago though, the battery completely died (at 77%). I just get an orange blinking battery light, and it will not be charged.
I got another hard drive, installed windows, and installed the power manager. The power manager says “A battery error has occured. The battery cannot be charged. Replace the battery.”
I looked it up and my battery ASM part number is listed under the warranty replacement FRUs, but the power manager program doesn’t see that number, only the FRU which is completely different…
FRU: 93P5032
ASM: 42T5209
September 1st, 2009 at 4:34 am
Yupp, I got the infamous ‘battery error’ message. My laptop simply turned off one day while operating on battery. Plugging it in, the error message appeared and my R61 became a desktop computer. What is awesome is that my FRU 42T5233, doesn’t qualify for replacement. Great! I am thinking of thanking Lenovo for at least not blowing it up.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:58 am
I am having X60 since Aug 2006. The first battery has this “rreparable damage…” after 2 years, I was told to buy a new one for US$250. This battery is not in the recall list. So i got it replaced on Aug 2007.
Today while at work, the battery flashes with the same error again, when I look at it, it is just 13 months OLD!!! Outside the warranty period.
So do you think these battery are programmed to “expire” by 12 months?
Now my X60 is outside the 3 years warranty, so I am on my own now on any problem… I have been a loyal supporter of X series since X20, X30 and now X60.
Now should I consider Sony, Toshiba or Mac?
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
I have a Thinkpad x61s and have just experienced the battery not charging issue with rapidly blinking amber light! As I’m constantly on the road for work, having a reliable _portable_ laptop is a must. I’m not impressed at all as the laptop is only just over a year and a half old. I have a spare battery at home that I’ll try but because of the heating issue with the thinkpad on the right palm rest from wifi and other parts, the persistent no-action from Lenovo and given the competing laptops on the market today, Lenovo has seen the last of me as a customer and I will no longer be recommending them to family, friends and work colleagues as I did in the past.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
From Singapore:
I have a Thinkpad X60 and my battery has been replaced twice and now has failed again. The last battery unfortunately has failed just after the warranty period and Lenovo has refused to replace it again.
There is a problem with the battery. Batteries don’t just fail like this. I tried explaining to the Care Center that if it the power charge had deteriorated over time due aging I could accept it. But it’s just pass a year, and the battery is completely useless. It has failed in the same manner as the other 2 batteries before. Working till you shut down, then the next time you power up, the dreaded ORANGE FLASHING BATT LIGHT.
Just because a car is out of the warranty period doesn’t mean its allowed to fall apart on the road. And responsible companies don’t just say, oh.. but its out of warranty you’ll just have to buy a new one.
And my battery doesn’t qualify for replacement under the recall scheme either. None of them did, yet they all failed.
I plan to bring this up to the “Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE)”.
If you have this problem, please email me the details and the serial numbers of your batteries so that I can fix this problem once and for all. The more proof I have the better.
Email me at firmlanding@yahoo.com.
October 7th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Yeah,same problem here – Irreparable battery damage!
I agree with Adam’s last words about battery!
October 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Irreparable battery damage here too. complete with the halloween orange blinking light. I hve been hesitant to get a new battery, what to do….
October 24th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Subject: IBM Thinkpad X60
Lenovo Case number: 5063300
My Lenovo X60 battery does not last more than a year, compared to 5 years for my old IBM Thinkpad and Toshiba Protégé? What I cannot understand is why the battery died exactly a year. Please note that this is my 2nd battery replaced on the 1st year of my purchased of the Lenovo X60 and I was very careful this time with the charging procedure as advised by Lenovo customer care, something might be wrong with the power manager. I have demanded an explanation from Lenovo Service Center but they did not reply.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Just posting again. I posted a few months ago, and now I too have the battery not charging problem!
Seeing it first hand I still think the battery management is to blame. My battery was down to 80% capacity, which after 311 cycles sounds about right. Then no more charging!
All these batteries die within a year of the warranty expiring.
I posted over on the Lenovo forums– I’m having issues with a 6 month old Lenovo T400 also– this is pretty ridiculous.
I bought the X61 due to the big honkin’ battery and the reputation of the Thinkpad. The previous lappy– a Dell– got flakey after 3 years. Well, the X61 is lying in a pile of old electronics after half that time cuz I havent had time to get another battery (which, from what I see via Googling, will probably die after a year also). if I need to be replacing major components this often, next time, I’ll just get another Dell. Same hassle, but better specs for less $$$.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Thinkpad Z61t, about three years old. Last night, I was using the laptop on battery, and it seemed just fine. I plugged it in to recharge just before I went to bed. This morning I wake up to discover the battery LED flashing yellow. ACPI reported battery charge at 100%. However, upon removing AC power, the system died instantly. (And yes, this is repeatable.)
ASM P/N 92P1126
FRU P/N 42T4512
Manufacturer: Sanyo
This system has run Linux since day one. ‘acpitool -B’ reports the following:
Battery #1 : present
Remaining capacity : 36280 mWh, 100.0%
Design capacity : 65520 mWh
Last full capacity : 36280 mWh, 55.37% of design capacity
Capacity loss : 44.63%
Present rate : 0 mW
Charging state : Full
Battery type : Li-ion, Battery
Model number : 42T4512
Serial number : 248
I’ve been noticing the escalating capacity loss for some time, so I’m not surprised by it. What’s surprised me is the totality of the failure — from a shortened battery life to absolutely nothing overnight.
Am I doomed to buying a replacement?
November 9th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Thinkpad T60P
FRU Part Number: 42T5245
Cycle count: 297
Manufacturer: Sanyo
same problem here – Irreparable battery damage!
All these batteries die within a year of the warranty expiring.
I am hesitant to get a new battery, what if same error message comes again….
November 11th, 2009 at 8:20 am
Regarding a T60, same problems as several others above. Setting threshold range to 80-90%: The battery is started being charged if when connecting the charger it is below 80%; gets to 90% and remains there while it should go back down to 80%. If I take out the charger plug, and let it go down to 86% and reconnect again, then the charge will remain at 86%.
Does the new power manager for XP solve this? (found in: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/supp.....IGR-70602)
November 25th, 2009 at 9:04 am
how shall i able to understand whether is it a Charger/Adapter’s or Battery’s problem? my system is t61 with 9 cell battery, now giving half n hour back up! through, power manager, it shows that the battery’s condition is FAIR!
what shall i do now? Replace the battery or Charging outlet? again in which case, shall i able to understand Charger’s error?
Many thanks.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:02 am
Like many people said above, the batteries of my old notebooks lasted at least 2~3 years. but two of my x60 batteries did not last longer than a year. The one which came with the notebook died only after 20~30 times of recharge. I suspect Chinese Lenovo models have some kind of technical problems.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Lenovo’s power manager works great if you’ve got a genuine Lenovo Battery installed. But the Genuine Lenovo Battery on my X61 won’t give me enough time anymore after (after a year) to read email on battery power, forget about anything else, and that’s with setting PM to manage the batt to extend the life. Lenovo batteries are EXPENSIVE, about 3 times what you can get a generic replacement LiIon and I just wasn’t willing to fork over the extra bucks for what I consider to be an already POS notebook. So I bought a 2200mha and 4500mha generic for about 33% less than a single, Genuine Lenovo standard 2200mah replacement. When I started my system with the new battery, Power Manager recognized it as not genuine, after which, it will no longer even come up. So I’ve had to revert to Vista’s System Icon. I don’t know, but I’ll have to see if these Chinese batteries installed in this Chinese X61 sill last longer than the one that came with it. If they don’t, this Lenovo X61 is going into the recycle bin.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:27 am
I have to agree with noproprietarycrap in that the new batteries last only about a year. We never had this issue with older models. I am trying to set the settings in ThinkVantage Power Manager for battery lifespan, but why is the optimize for battery not the default setting?
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
My T60 battery is charging over 20 hours. But, still at 0% charge and orrange batter icon is flashing. Replaced with new battery and it is doing the same. Any idea?
January 23rd, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Thinkpad X60
My battery stopped working all of a sudden one day. The orange light keeps flashing even though the power manager software reads there are still 50% of battery left. When I disconnect the power, the computer shuts down automatically.
This very frustrating because it seems that changing a new battery still not fix the problem. Lenovo needs to do something about their product, if they want to keep the reputation of thinkpad!