x301 Battery Problem

The battery in my Lenovo x301 was working fine yesterday, until I took the laptop apart to clean it. Now I put it back together, and the orange battery light is blinking, and the computer shuts down if I unplug the AC cord. Is there any way to fix this?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

How old is the battery?

 

3 years old

 

Buy a new battery.

 

You mean the battery broke/died while I was cleaning the computer?

 

When a battery is three years old, it's old and can go at any time. You can open Power Manager, and see what the remaining charge capacity is and how many cycles it has, but it's probably just old and broke. You could try recalibrating it too, also in Power Manager, but I don't see much of a chance for that working.

 

Before buying a new battery, is there any way to check that I did not screw up the internal wiring, when I was cleaning the computer?

 

I've never opened up a x300/301 but usually the battery pins just slip into a receiving slot on the mobo, very little to go wrong there. It either will charge or it wont if the problem was physical breakage at the connectors or bending of the pins. As you said the computer shuts down when you unplug the AC, so the AC to mobo connection is probably fine. In the meantime if you have a 90 watt adapter it should run the laptop without the battery in place. Try a reset/calibration of the battery, and check out the battery stats in power manager. it may not have broke as a direct consequence of the cleaning, it could just be coincidence. 3 years is a reasonable lifetime for the battery.

 

Can you recommend any places that have the 6 cell battery for cheaper than shop.lenovo.com? I heard that some are more dependable than others.

 

ebay. Look for sellers with good feedback and the words "genuine" or "original" describing the battery. There's usually someone trying to shift some old stock at nice prices. I bought a spare battery that was 3 years old, was advertised as new and works as if it was new.

John