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Wes
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I have a Lenovo T400 thinkpad laptop which is about 4 years

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I have a Lenovo T400 thinkpad laptop which is about 4 years old. Suddenly the battery stopped charging. I switched chargers, I switched batteries, I downloaded the latest Power Manager software. The Power Manager shows that the pc is charging, it just doesnt charge. If I unplug PC from AC and let it run on battery its OK but it drains the remaining charge. Since 1 battery is already discharged the PC only works on AC power. I run diagnostics and nothing appears wrong, and it continues to say its charging yet power meter stays at same place. I removed and reattached both batteries a few times and I see no damage. I did some research and see nothing else on internet to do although I see I am not alone with this problem. Any ideas ?
Justin
Greetings.

What operating system is this? XP, Vista, or 7?

Also, when was the last time it charged successfully on either battery?
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

The OS is Windows XP SP3.

The original battery charged all the time for last 4 years. When it stopped I assumed it was the old battery so last week bought a new one from Lenovo. That wouldnt charge either. So, to answer the question, battery 1 charged OK just about 7 days ago. Battery 2 never charged so ran down with the little charge it had at delivery.
Interesting. Likely something hardware related. If you've tried a different power adapter as well. Try going into start, run, type devmgmt.msc and hit enter. Locate batteries and remove all items under the battery listing. Should be the very first one, then restart and they should reinstall on next boot. Then see if it's charging. Let me know the results. On the road so might take a minute to respond
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

Did as instructed. 'Uninstalled' both battery and charger from the list and rebooted. Checked and both listings are back under BATTERY. No change in problem. While there I noticed the driver is dated 7/2001 so I let it search for a new version on Windows Update, but it found no newer version.


Further, the little battery light indicator blinks continuously. On battery 2 which is completely discharged, it blinks orange. On battery 1 which still has 34% it blinks in green. In looking at the indication from the instructions you gave , or looking at Power Manager, they both say that the battery is operating properly and is charging. BUT no charging is taking place.
Yeah I didn't have much hope, thinking it's a motherboard issue. However like I said I'm in the road so I'm going to opt out for now to another tech in hopes that you can get faster responses. I'll try to check back later if no one assists you. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the meantime, you could try a system restore to a date prior to when the battery stopped charging. Start all programs, accessories, system tools, system restore. Click show more restore dates and check something prior to the issue
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Plug the computer in with the battery installed, don't turn it on, leave it for a few hours. If it's not charged, the charging circuit (inside the laptop) is bad and will require service. While the charging circuit can be turned off by certain apps, those apps should not have any effect if the computer is off.
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.
Will do and will report back after a few hours
The other possibility (I didn't see this covered) is the AC adapter port could be damaged or broken. The laptop should be able to operate without a battery as long as it's plugged in. Also, with it plugged in you should be able to see a power/charging led (looks like a power plug) should show green anytime the laptop is plugged into AC power. If you do not see any activity on this LED, or if the system will not turn on with with either AC adapter connected with no battery installed it may be that the AC adapter port has a broken connection (a fairly common problem). If that is the case, it is possible to repair/resolder it, but it can be very labor intensive.

The battery status LED will do the following depending on the charge of the battery:

Green: The battery is charged between 80% to 100% of the
capacity, and being discharged between 0% to 80% of
the capacity.
Blinking green:
The battery is charged between 20% to 80% of the
capacity, and being charged.
Orange:
The battery is charged between 5% and 20% of the
capacity, and being discharged.
Blinking orange (slow):
The battery is charged between 5% to 20% of the
capacity, and being charged.
Blinking orange (rapid):
The battery is charged between 0% to 5% of the capacity

This is the service manual for the T400, if you look at pages 52-53 it talks about testing the charging system (which is basically the procedure I described in the previous post).

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/43y6629_05.pdf
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

Thanks for suggestions. I will recap what I said to the other expert.


There are 2 batteries involved since I bought a new battery thinking that was the problem. Bat 1 the original is at 34 % capacity and the battery light blinks green. Bat 2 is completely discharged so the battery light is blinking orange. If I remove AC power when Bat1 is in the laptop continues to operate on battery power, slowly discharging. If I try to remove AC power when BAT 2 is in, PC instantly turns off. This is because I operated laptop with only battery power until it completely discharged. In fact the Power Manager recognizes this and says ' battery is completely discharged and is now charging' .The AC power light is on when charger is plugged in.


One interesting little symptom is that usually when I would plug or unplug from AC an audible beep would be heard -- not not anymore since this problem started.


So, I know AC power is working. In fact, I have tried 3 chargers with no change. All are for this laptop, 1 came with it.


I have worked with these laptops for many years and so I tried all that I could think of, including downloading the Lenovo Service Manual. In researching on the internet I see I am not the only one with similar problems. Is there any chance that microcode is corrupted and I need to reload the bios ??

If you have enough power to do it, you have nothing to lose. If you're getting power indication with the adapters plugged in, it's not the adapter port, and it's simply not possible that you'd have three defective adapters. Whatever the reason, BIOS corruption or physical failure the charging circuit is not operating. It's not an unheard of problem. In addition to being an authorized Lenovo Business Partner, I've had 3 Thinkpads (two IBM era and 1 Lenovo) myself and never had an issue with any of them. Did you say if the laptop would operate on AC power? I can't remeber off hand if the lenovo bios flash programs will let you flash on battery power alone.

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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

I have had many Thinkpads because I like the way mouse works with red button. Yes, the laptop works fine on AC power. Under Bat 1 which is at 34% the laptop operates under AC and the power level stays constant. Under Bat 2 the laptop ONLY works under AC power since the BAT 2 is completely discharged. Power Manager and Tools and the lights all indicate the thing is charging but it obviously is not.


The one clue I will repeat is that since this problem there is no little beep when I plug and unplug from AC. On previous Lenovo/IBM laptops, and on this one, there was a beep but since the problem started on this one - no beep. This is why I wondered about the bios.


I am still trying your first suggestion, i.e. try to charge with PC off.


Since PC operates under AC I could flash the bios. I never liked flashing under battery because of the risk doing so.


 
Yes you could flash on AC. In all honesty I don't know if the lack of the beep is related to microcode or not. It's certainly worth a try. And I think enough time has passed for charging with the laptop off. If the battery's charge hasn't increased significantly, no amount of power off charging is going to change it. Try flashing the bios and let me know what happens.
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

As expected, the charging while powered off did not change anything. NO change on either battery. I did flash the bios, rebooted, during boot up I went and reset all bios to defaults. Still no change on either battery.


It shows the battery light blinking and Power Manager says battery is good and charging. Doesnt appear to me like their disagnostics are much good. Ready for any more ideas you may have.
Try downloading and installing this program:

http://batterycare.net/en/index.html

I use it on my current laptop and it gives more information than the standard power managers that come with the systems. I'm not saying it's going to fix the problem but maybe it will give us more of an idea what's going on. I'm still pretty convinced the charging circuit died.
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.
batterycare installed. It shows for bat 1 the original battery with 34 % the same thing and it says 'charging' and the various capacity info. On the fully discharged battery it reports 'fully charged'. I am a little suspicious of this new battery although it came from IBM/Lenovo parts and I give them the FRU number correctly. It did run for awhile however until fully discharged.
What are the other voltages and numbers shown by battery care?
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

attached are captures from batterycare
In the second picture, see the charge/discharge rate?
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.
Yes this confirms what I have observed, its not charging. Since I was on AC it shouldnt be discharging either. Do we conclude it must be some hardware problem ? if its the motherboard and since its out of warranty I sort of think it isnt worth repairing ??
Yes that pretty much confirms that it's a hardware problem with the charging circuit on the mainboard which makes it not worth fixing because it would require replacing the mainboard.
Wes, Consultant
Category: Laptop
Satisfied Customers: 962
Experience: 20+ years experience with laptop support issues. Authorized HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus, MSI, Sager, and Gigabyte partner.
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Customer: replied 4 years ago.

As a followup to my problem, I let the laptop sit turned off with no power for about 10 days. Now, its charging ! It fully charged both batteries.


I sort of think its related to an option that I took, at the beginning when the first battery was not lasting long to reset the power meter. The instructions said it would completely discharge and then charge the battery and not to disconnect AC during this. When nothing happened for 2 days, I did disconnect and that may have triggered something in the microcode. I can hope that now it will work, we will see.
Thank you for for the update. I am glad to hear that the problem resolved itself. I am aware of battery conditioning processes like this. In fact the Battery Care software does this for systems where the manufacturer doesn't provide this capability. My Thinkpad T61 would shut off the charging circuit at ~97% in order to avoid peaking out the battery continually but I can't remember if it did the same sort of discharge service yours is doing. I wouldn't think the discharge, recalibrate, and charge process would take more than 24 to 48 hours... but maybe the system hiccuped in the middle. I will definitely keep this in mind when dealing with similar situations in the future and will have to see if I can get Lenovo to provide any information on issues like this. Once again thanks for the update and let me know if you have any further questions.
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