Installed Windows 7 Pro on Lenovo N500 - Battery Problem

[tonymcchrystal]

Hello,

A company laptop had a broken hard drive which I replaced. I then installed Windows 7 Pro and installed the drivers, etc for the N500 (type 4233, 79g) laptop. However, the battery status always reads 0% available (plugged in, not charging) and Thinkvantage Toolbox states that the battery is not installed. Tried a 3rd party battery monitor (Batterycare) which also displays it as 0%.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Tony

[yigit]

try to remove/replace the battery and make sure you installed power management drivers.
also, you may need to install windows updates to fix the issue.

[tonymcchrystal]

Hello,

That didn't solve the problem. All the power management drivers are installed, and I tried installing the Vista drivers in compatibility mode. I know the battery is working, as when I remove the AC power, the machine stays on (albeit with really annoying beeps). Perhaps the biggest problem was that before the hard drive broke, the machine was running Windows Vista, whereas now it's running Windows 7 32-Bit Pro. 

When I was trying to fix the problem, the machine briefly flashed up "The battery is 100% charged" but that quickly disappeared!

Looking at the compatibility list for the Windows 7 Power Management tool, the N500 isn't listed as being compatible. I'd rather install XP Pro than Vista if that solved the problem, but it's not an ideal solution.

Is there anything else I can try rather than install an older OS?

[yigit]

http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/IdeaPad-Y-U-B-V-and-Z-series/Lenovo-Ideapad-Y560D-AC-Adapter-Battery-Prob...