Weird Battery Issue, and question on 7 Cell

Ok, this is very odd and has got me puzzled and angered. To start off I am a PC tech and installer, so I have quite a lot of years and experience around PCs/Laptops.

I have a T61 14.1" that was bought last year. It has a 7 Cell Main Battery and Ultrabay battery. Has been working just fine and both batteries still had most of their charge potential left (only had about 50 charge/discharges on my main battery). I stopped using it for about 4 weeks as my semester was over with and then today went to fire it up, it had been sitting in my bag for the 4 weeks.

Boots just fine, but then my battery icon is flashing rapidly. Go into the battery manager and it says both batteries have 0% capacity left in them and are unable to charge and need to be replaced! I have tried the battery reset and it does nothing, tried removing them separatly, nothing, tried looking up the lenovo battery recall and neither one is covered!

SO I am at a loss, I have no idea why they would have just failed from sitting for 4 weeks or so. I have had it sit for longer periods of time than that. Both batteries were also in great condition before hand!

Anyone have any ideas? I think it might have something to do with the batteries just being marked bad but in reality the cells themselves are ok. The flashing battery light also occurs even when the machine is not booted up, so they will not charge at all.



Then, one other question. I went to look for a new 7 Cell battery (41U3197) and I come to find that lenovo no longer has them on their site! Is there a problem with this battery or a rason it was discontinued? I can find another on eBay, but maybe there is a reason it was discontinued?

Thanks in advance for any help.


Cliffs:
-T61 Works fine let it sit for 4 wks
-Turn it on and both batteries say they will not charge (ultrabay/main battery)
-Nothing I do makes them work

-Is there a reason they discontinued the 7 Cell battery on their site?

 

Hm... don't know WHY they don't have the 7 cell, but it seems to me that almost all of the companies are going to 6 cell or 9 cell... so that MAY be why no more 7 cells exist...

Just a thought. XD

 

Ok, ya I was just curious if anyone knew if it was because of some kind of defect or issue or something. I really like the extra runtime.

Sucks loosing $300 worth of batteries that were perfect a month ago and I really did nothing to them, yet lenovo has no answer!

 

I believe, leaving certain types of batteries at certain charges for extended periods of time actually does damage them. For example, storing certain types of batteries ( Li-I ) with no charge for a while can damage them.

 

Ya, its just so weird that both failed. I have had them sit for longer than 4wks before (they sat for a good 2 months middle of last year and never seemed to have any issue after using them for a good 4months after that).

Annoying as I am outside the 1 year warranty by 12 days on the main battery, and the ultrabay battery expires tomorrow (though I might get a replacement for that...working on it with lenovo...)

 

I don't know which article it was, but it was an official news bit a while back said that if you were going to store a Li-I batt. for long periods of time it is best to be stored at 40% battery life in fridge temperatures...

 

Yes i believe thats correct, at the same time though, i agree with grentz in the fact that they both failed at the same time. This being said im not sure that the failure ( or both failures ) can be attributed to the charge.

 

Thats also sort of my worry, I dont know what is going on exactly and I dont have any other batteries off hand to try in my T61 as both of mine are now fried!

Besides that though, the notebook is still running off the AC Cord just fine and even pulls the battery info just fine (but says they have no capacity and cannot charge).

 

(try this only on the out of warranty battery)

use the run down function from the boot version of PC doctor
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-56222

interesting part on reviving batteries on thinkwiki

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Maintenance#Battery_treatment

not sure how true it is but worth a shot if you are out of warranty

also I think rmclock has some sort of "request charge" option. might help but I think only the full version of RMclock has this.

good luck

 

Thx, I will give it a try. Anything is worth a shot at this point!

 

Nope, did nothing. All it does is ramp up the hardware devices to try and run the battery down.

 

Well after some more phone calls I got the Ultrabay battery replaced hopefully, but I am SOL on the main battery so I ordered up a new 6 Cell replacement.

Sucks overall but I am glad and thankful that I at least was able to get one of them replaced under warranty!, and I still wish there was a way to "reset" these batteries as I have a pretty good feeling they are fine, just marked bad by the software in them.

 

Are you sure it's not something funky going on with the computer software?
I wonder if a standalone battery charger would jump start it. Lenovo sells them. Probably not something you would want to buy for testing purposes, but I love having mine for charging spare batteries (I hate being wired to AC). But I have one. If you get desperate, I could try it for you. I also have the 7 cell battery and that's my favorite size out of the batch that I have - 4, 7 and 9 cell (plus drive bay).

Good luck.

Scooter

 

i have heard of people freezing/heating up batteries to jump start them. Not sure if there is any truth to it.

Might make it worse but if I was in your shoes I would give it a shot as a last chance effort before scraping the battery as a total loss.