X200 Battery/Gauge Problem

Hey folks. I'm having a serious issue with my X200 battery/Gauge. For whatever reason, the laptop goes into hibernation when Power Manager reads 40% (2.5 hours remaining). When I pull the laptop out of hibernation (now connected to AC) the battery only reads 6%. Anyone know what is going on here? This has happened twice so far and in both cases I've only managed 2ish hours. Thanks

 

Turn off the automatic hibernate/standby actions (I assume you have them set between 5-10%).

My best guess is that your battery has had a cell (or two) go bad. This happened on a junk generic battery I had for my T40. It would drop from 60% to 5% in about 2 minutes (completely skipping a few of the cells).

When you have turned off the timer you can watch the gauge as it goes from 50% to 5%. If it jumps down 10%+ instantly then you almost certainly have a bad cell.

Lenovo generally warranties batteries for 1 year from purchase and yours should still be in that range (the x200 is <1 year old). Therefore, if you have a bad cell you should get it replaced as soon as possible (usually they just overnight a replacement with a pre-paid return box for the defective part).

You can also try deep cycling the battery (turn off all shut off timers and let it run down until the battery protection circuit engages), but this is unlikely to fix anything if the battery is jumping down 30% in an instant.

 

Thanks Jon. I'm going to perform one more test tonight to see if I can emulate the problem again. If the problem persists I will definitely be calling Lenovo for a replacement battery. Cheers!

 

Just an update. I've been testing out the battery for the last few days, and each day I've seemingly improved the point where the laptop goes into hibernation. A couple days back I was able to hit 35%, yesterday I hit 31%, and today I'm at 28% and still going. I'm really baffled by this. Is it actually possible to progressively 'wake' any 'dead' cells in the battery through use?

 

To the best of my knowledge, no this is not possible. However, you can "re-calibrate" the battery, but usually that works in only a single step (doesn't take 5 effors).

Therefore, I maintain that you call Lenovo and get the battery replaced. It should still be under warranty and they will usually mail you a replacement battery before requiring you to send in the defective one (i.e. no downtime).