thinkpad X301 with dual batteries reads both but only uses one

My Thinkpad X301 has a primary battery and a secondary media bay battery. Both can be seen in the power mangement icon, as well as their charge state. The problem is that once the secondary battery is drained the system goes immediate shutdown rather than using the primary battery.

if I dont remove the drained secondary battery, or plug the AC power, even the primary battery is 100%, my laptop cant boot

 

what OS do you have? also did you install power manager driver for your laptop? finally does your laptop work normally with the main battery (without the media bay battery)?

P.S. when did this problem first started to occur, was there similar behaviour when the laptop was new?

 

should I change some setup in the BIOS?

 

i have a X301 that has a media bay battery and 6 cells battery, and using the Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit, the switch over occurs automatically. There is no setting in the bios that can change the behaviour.

 

My X301 has exactement the same characteristic as yours: a media bay battery and 6 cells battery, and using the Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
I have no ideal why it has this behavior, and I hadn't foud some setting I can change in the power manager driver to avoid this behavoir

 

I appears to have the exact same problem. With both batteries fitted, the machine can read the state of both but it drains only the secondary one. When that runs flat, the machine dies.

I've tested this using two different X301s, two primary batteries and two secondary batteries - both machines do it. And these aren't Windows either - one's running Ubuntu 14.04, the other 15.04.

Did you find a fix??

 

This is a known problem with an aftermarket 3Cell Bay battery in the X301. Are you using an aftermarket battery in the Bay? How about your six cell? Is it an OEM battery? I have a 6 cell/3cell Bay combination and have no problem with switching automatically when the 3 cell is discharged.

 

Yes, it's an after-market bay battery. I think one of the two primary batteries I have is genuine, the other is after-market. Does that make a difference?

And is there a fix? (He asked, hopefully. )

Going off at a tangent briefly, I would also like to be able to control the battery order, so the primary drains first then the bay battery as reserve, but I guess that's a bit too wishful.

 

I don't know of a fix. There is a discussion of the aftermarket 3 cell issue in the thread in my sig but I don't recall any solution. I had an aftermarket 6 cell and had issues with it just shutting down my X301 because of bad contacts I believe. I replaced it with OEM and never had another problem.

It would seem to me that there should be some way to change the discharge order but I haven't heard about it being done. Sorry I don't have better news.

 

Many thanks - I'm scanning through the other thread, I've still got a long way to do though! So please excuse me if I just ask for a quick clarification here: Do you mean that the combination of an OEM 6-cell and an aftermarket bay battery should failover correctly, or that you needed both batteries to be OEM?

 

No matter which 6 cell battery you have, the aftermarket 3 cell bay battery will stop once it discharges. I confused you asking about the 6 cell. It has no bearing on the 3 cell bay battery's failure to hand off to the 6 cell. The aftermarket 3 cell just does not work properly, plain and simple. An OEM version will work properly with an OEM 6 cell or, most of the time, an aftermarket 6 cell. Even at that, I had some issues with my 6 cell after market battery not working correctly - that was the only reason I mentioned it. AFAIK, there is no solution for the 3 cell problem. Don't waste your time wading through the thread. Sorry.

 

Ah, thanks for that. So basically I've just wasted my money on this 3-cell bay battery, when what I should have got was a fat new aftermarket 6-cell. Damn!

(Ah-ha, apparently I might have a chance, because the supplier offers a 30-day money back guarantee. Fingers crossed!)