T500 burning up after putting it to sleep!

I put my T500 to sleep last night before going to bed. I charged my phone and a heart rate monitor on the USB ports. I got home this evening and went to turn it on. The battery, AC adapter, and sleep lights were on, but the laptop was so hot! The fan was on a low speed. I yanked out the batter and power adapter to turn it off. The battery is from Ebay, and its plastic was warped near the edges where it touched the main body of the laptop. I couldn't even put my hand on the bottom of the computer near the processor and GPU. Same goes for the top. The screen was also very hot, but it was touchable. There was also a faint burnt plastic smell. I waited a few minutes, and the laptop didn't seem any cooler. I plugged in the power cord and tried to started but it wouldn't until the fourth time I tried. The second time I tried it gave me a beep code. 3-3-1 I think. Now it seems to be working fine and all is good. The battery is ok, but it is harder to fit and it no longer sits perfectly flush. This is really strange. The only think I can think that could have caused it would be that yesterday I installed drivers for the turbo memory. That was the only thing that was different. Oh well. It would be nice to not worry about my laptop not having another nuclear meltdown...

 

Do you have a picture of the melted part? Are you using a genuine Lenovo charger?

 

Perhaps you have some sleep wake timers that turn on your computer periodically while in sleep in order to update and sync your apps. Try turning wake timers in your power advanced power settings (e.g. high performance, balanced, power saver, etc.)

 

In the commandprompt enter:
powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

It will list the devices that are allowed to wake your PC. Likely the modem is in there, but the networkcard might be as well plus some USB devices.

Unplugging a USB device might wake it up as well, depending on settings.

And yeah; don't get no-name batteries. While you might get junk batteries from Lenovo, they are still relatively good junk.

 

^^^^^^^

This. A zillion times over.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

 

The AC adapter is from Lenovo. The battery is from Ebay and has about 4/5 of its original capacity. The battery pack didn't melt, it just got a little bit warped from where it touches the rest of the computer near the CPU and GPU. The plastic it is made of isn't as high quality as the Lenovo plastic I guess. I couldn't hold my finger on the left side of the keyboard and even the screen was uncomfortably warm. I was worried it had broken.

The computer does wake up from sleep when something is unplugged from USB, but it was in sleep mode when I found it (at least the sleep light was on) but the CPU and GPU must have been at full load for some reason.

I've never had a problem with ebay batteries. They of course use bottom end cells that wear out faster, but the cells can be replaced with something higher quality or a whole new battery can be bought for very little money.

 

not sure why you would still buy non-oem batteries, i mean the t500 batteries from lenovo are cheap as is, personally it isn't something i would chance, but then again i have the habit of using the "good" stuff on everything that isn't cheap to replace such as cars/electronics, father has told me it's the little things that matter

 

Don't buy batteries from ebay, even ones that look genuine often aren't and if a shady manufacturer is going to fake a lenovo logo, they will fake the RoHS, UL Labs and any other safety certification logo too.

The problem is the modern "free trade" laws. In the past all batteries (or goods in general) had to pass through inspection to make sure they were authentic, but in a person to person sale, anyone with a wharehouse full of fake batteries and ship them 1 (or a few) at a time in personal shipments and bypass all import regulations.

If you want a generic battery, get one from a reputable company that makes (or sells) them in your country, one that you can sue if you find out it was illegally manufactured or imported.

I'd recommend you NEVER use that battery again. I'd recommend opening a case with ebay, but the $10-20 you paid isn't even worth going after and I doubt you'll get any compensation for the damage it likely did to your laptop. You may have gotten lucky, but that heat surely put a lot of stress on your system but I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

Regarding the ebay seller, I think in a situation like that the best recourse is feedback. Many people are willing to cut a seller some slack if they get a refund, which is great if it's a sale in good faith that went wrong, but if the person is selling counterfiet (fake, I'm not talking about legit generics, but either fake genuine looking, or generics that have no manufacturer info on them) batteries others should be warned and I'd personally rather take the loss and warn others. I've had this happen to me and it caused a fire. Luckily I was there to put it out immediately and didn't lose my house or any members of my family over it.

ps. If you want a genuine battery I have some.

 

I bought the battery months ago and there was never any problem. How could a battery force the GPU and CPU to be active in sleep mode? The battery seems to be working perfectly fine now. It is just isn't smooth to remove or replace anymore as the plastic is slightly warped in one place.

The only thing that changed in my system was that I installed the drivers for the Intel Turbo Memory module. I had just replaced the thermal paste the other day and saw the module in the laptop, so I figured I might as well install the Intel drivers so that I could use it.

I haven't had any problems since, but I am refraining from plugging in any USB devices to charge while the computer is asleep. If I get around to it, I will try to force the same issue to happen again, with and without the battery to see if that changes anything, then without the drivers for the turbo memory module installed.