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    R40 Battery issues / charging

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by steve-o, Nov 14, 2007.

  1. steve-o

    steve-o Notebook Guru

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    Hi Guys,

    I've recently aquired an R40 from work for my daughter.

    I was running it on AC while rebuilding it, so didn't notice the problem at first. However once I finished it, I went to move the laptop to another room, just running on battery for a while to test the battery life.

    The battery was reported as 100% (using windows XP built in power monitor the lenovo utilities were not installed). I used the laptop for all of about 5 minutes then the alarm sounded and it jumped down to 2% with the critical alarm sounding, so I ran back to the other room but it was too late it shut off.

    I plugged in the adapter and let it start charging again. to my surprise it seemed to hit 100% within about 15 minutes, so something was definatley not right here. I unplugged and again when it got to about 90% on the meter it dropped to a critical level.

    I installed the lenova battery maximiser and utilities incase the windows software was misreading the battery and the utilities showed the battery at a low percent, I checked the battery health and the program reported it as good. I left it charging for a long period, it took around 1 hour to get to 33%, I had to unplug the adapter and move the machine upstairs. So I unplugged the adapter, but as soon as I plugged it back in, the power meter shot up to 100% again. I let it drain down then started charging again and gave it a full charge this time until the meter was at 100%. I've yet to try it as I had to go to work before trying it in the morning but I'm hoping it may be ok.

    I'm just wondering if anyone else has seen this problem before and may know what it could be?


    Thanks.
     
    steve-o, Nov 14, 2007
    #1
  2. John B

    John B Notebook Prophet

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    How old is the battery?
     
    John B, Nov 14, 2007
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  3. steve-o

    steve-o Notebook Guru

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    It's hard to tell, we issue out so many batteries from here that it could have been a recent one or as old as a year.

    I've seen batteries die before, or have poor performance, but I've not really seen the capacity being mis-represented or reported in windows.

    Some people have said that some of the lenovo batteries have a chip in them which measures the charge and passes it to the computer, could this be the issue?
     
    steve-o, Nov 14, 2007
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  4. gridtalker

    gridtalker Notebook Virtuoso

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    I have heard of this but don't know if its true.
     
    gridtalker, Nov 14, 2007
    #4