Thinkpad T60 reports battery at 0%, yet keeps running

So my Power Manager has said my battery is at 0:00 for a good 15 or 20 minutes now, but my system keeps on trucking. Earlier, the battery jumped chaotically from 1:30 to 1:00 to almost nothing. It then shut down on me from the critical battery alarm. I booted it up again anyways and managed to turn off the alarms and actions. It's been running for quite a while now while registered that the battery has 0 charge.

I saw the sticky about Windows 7 and battery firmware, but it didn't mentions T60's. I am running Windows 7 Professional and I have PM 3.30 installed.

I checked to see if my battery was up for recall, but it's not.

Any thoughts?

 

How old is the battery? 4 years?

 

Hard to say. I just purchased the machine today and the entire thing looks like it's in mint condition. It's barely been used.

Clearly the cells are holding a charge because I'm typing on the machine right now. So I'm not sure what's going on.

 

Maybe you want to recalibrate it?

 

being able to hold a charge doesn't mean the battery is good anymore. Try calibrating it (it's in the bios and power manager has some servicing tools too right). If not I would get a new one because an unreliable battery is not usable at all.

When my old battery started dying it would hold a charge too despite saying 0% or 10%. but it randomly shuts down.. I had no way of fixing it or telling how much charge is left (I could plug it in and it would charge 70% then stop. I unplug and replug, 80% then stop. and I could do this until it went to 100%). It's okay it's normal wear and tear - laptop batteries for me only last around 2 years before being replaced.

 

Yea, I would recommend going through the battery maintenance with Lenovo Power Manager. It will also give you a reasonable about of information on the battery like the number of cycles, first used date, etc.

You can also look up the battery at the lenovo.com website to see if it's under warranty and other stuff.

Might get lucky.

 

It finally powered off after a few more minutes.

So are there any good places to find genuine lenovo batteries without paying $100+?

 

The Lenovo Outlet.

 

Ah, I just checked them. They only have about 6 batteries--none for my model. There is some guy on ebay claiming to sell genuine lenovo batteries for about $55 shipped from china, though.

 

I'd be weary of that. There's a lot of counterfeit batteries on ebay.

 

Found a better link:

http://tinyurl.com/2eu77ce

Can I do any better than that?

 

I swear a few days ago there was 100+ nine-cell and 50 six-cell batteries in the outlet . Since they're dirt cheap and basically new, they tend to go fast. Last year no one knew about it, but I don't think that's the case any longer. If you can be patient some may come back.

I bought the four-cell battery for my X200 under similar circumstances. The battery was pictured with the Lenovo logo and the description said the picture was of the actual item. Needless to say I got a knock-off a six-cell battery. It's in dispute with Paypal right now. I'm not saying it's not legit, but I'd be wary.

 

I'm starting to think the good deal on this laptop may not have been so good.

The guy sold me an aftermarket ac adapter with the machine. I didn't think much of it at the time, but I just realized it's a 65W model--the one meant to be used with T60's with integrated graphics. This machine has the ATI GPU so it's suppose to have a 90W adapter.

My little aftermarket adapter is uncomfortably hot right now.

 

then get the 90 watt adapter from the Lenovo outlet if you are in USA.

I wouldn't use the 65 watt adapter with the T60 laptop on discrete GPU, especially if your battery is run down in the same time. The power draw for the laptop and the battery charging can sometimes cause the adapter to overheat (it could reach in excess of 70 degrees Celsius if your adapter is not in a cool and ventilated area).

 

Yeah, it worries me. I just found a guy on CL selling a 90W cheap, though...so hopefully I can get it tomorrow. I set my 65W on top of a metal box, incase it decides to melt.

 

hopefully if it does melt, the internal wiring is not going to touch the metal box.

 

Well, wouldn't that suck.

 

So the problem with buying anything on craigslist is actually getting anyone to write you back.

Microcenter has a Fedco 90W adapter for the T60 for $60 and they also have a genuine Lenovo 9 cell battery for $179. I'm considering just biting the bullet, spending the $255, and getting this over with.

 

Well I bought a genuine battery (6 cell) from eBay and it turns out to be as described. It was brand new as I checked the cycle count which stated 1 at the time and the Power Manager was certainly happy with it too as it doesn't nag. It only costed me £29.99 (~$46 USD), Lenovo UK wanted at least £135 (~$208) in comparison. Needless to say i'm very pleased with the purchase.

It just depends on the seller, i'm weary with sellers from the Far East for batteries as it can be all too easy to get a fake version. I bought my battery from a local seller and I got it the next day which is an added bonus.

 

Yeah, ebay is tempting. That link I posted has one for $65 for the 6-cell version. If it's as described, then it's worth it. If not, then I'll be wishing I had just went down to the store today and spend $.

The local battery store, Batteries Plus, sells a quality after market battery for about $117 for the 9-cell. But I'm thinking it will probably cause the Power Manager to yap about it not being genuine. The only way to get rid of that is to remove the Power Manager, and if you remove it, then Fn-F3 no longer works.

Decisions, decisions.

 

Well I heard some people attempted registry hacks to stop the Power Manager nagging. You still have information on the battery gauges but any informational popups will be nullified as a result.

 

I go into Power Manager and untick "periodically show messages about battery charging capacity." This stops the annoying popup over the taskbar about not using a Genuine Lenovo battery.

One thing I would like to add is that my 6-cell battery is a "feebay" battery. It's been in my T400 on-and-off for the last 8 months and it works fine. It has not exploded or rendered my T400 unusable.

There is always the risk of non-genuine battery damaging your Thinkpad!

In my case money was an issue and the gamble paid off. If I could do it over again and had the money I would have gone with a genuine from the Lenovo Outlet.