Thinkpad R61 Battery/Power issues

[SubnetMask]

I have about ten Thinkpad R61 (8934-F9U) notebooks, most of which have random problems powering on. We've found that if you remove the battery for about 30 seconds and re-insert it, the notebook will power up and work fine. One in particular has gone past this. The user takes it home at night, plugs it in at home and it works fine. When he brings it back into the office the following morning and docks it, it will not power on. He removes and re-inserts the battery and docks it, and it'll power on. It does this every time. All the notebooks have the latest BIOS (September of 08 for these). Does anyone have any ideas why these notebooks are having these issues?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

Is the environment where you work, have a hgh moisture contents?? Also what types of power plugs are you people using, does it have ground???

[SubnetMask]

The environment is a climate controlled office space, so no excessive moisture. The outlets are grounded, but the power adapters are standard "two prong" ungrounded Lenovo adapters.

[SubnetMask]

Does anyone else have any thoughts? It's a bit infuriating to have all the laptops having a similar issue.

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

So are you only having the problem, when the laptop is docked???

[SubnetMask]

Sorry for the delay; I've talked to some of the users and have gotten some more info. So far, it appears to affect at least three users. Could be more, but those are the users that have brought it up. It does not appear to be dock related. One user says that it's after docking, but it could be just that he docks it and tries to turn it on. The other two users report that it'll happen randomly. They can't pimpoint any specific steps to get it to happen. They'll shut down their PCs and sometimes thy just won't poser on until the battery is removed and re-inserted, regardless of whether or not it's plugged into the wall. It appears to be some kind of hardware level issue, since the machines will not power on at all. Is it possible we got a bad batch of batteries?

[pcsandpieces]

Hi, Im sorry to just barge in but i'm new and I have no idea how to create a new post, anyway, this is a very similar issue to what I am having, the thinkpad fires up fine with battery and charger in, it also powers up fine with charger in, and also powers up fine with just battery, this is what we do not understand, we then shutdown the laptop, it shuts down then starts back up again on its own, we then suspected the charger so we tried with just the battery and this done the same, so we tried the charger with no battery and it was fine it shutdown and stayed off, we then inserted the battery while off and 10 seconds later it turned itself on again, battery wake in bios is disabled, we have tried a different battery and charger with the same effect, the only other thing I can think of is the charge circuit on the board, weird thing is it only turns on when the charger is removed or as soon as you plug the battery in this happens with any charger or battery, I updated to the latest bios and even reflashed with no effect. Please could you get back to me asap this is a customers laptop.

Thanks

Nick

[pcsandpieces]

I have resovled it if anyone reads this with the same problem - I removed the keyboard and the problem stopped in my case this was a dirty connection, so check your keyboard.

[umbertones]

Can you make sure, that this isn't related to the fact, that the battery drains (there are threads handling this behaviour) with several Thinkpad models even when in hibernation. My work T500 showed your above mentioned behaviour once in a while and moslty the battery was plain empty then.

Regards

Umbi