T420 will not draw power from battery

[BrentTH]

I received my T420 today.  The power manager bar at the bottom of the screen shows that there is no battery remaining with a red X over the bar.  The power manager indicates "Error Detected".  I tried swapping out the battery from another T420 in the office that worked fine on the other computer.  I receive the same error message.  When I unplug AC power, the computer shortly dies. 

Any idea what the problem is and how to fix it?

[JameZ]

Hello BrenTH,

Try uninstalling Power Manager, Power Management driver then reboot then install power management driver then Power manager back and see if it helps.

//JameZ

[BrentTH]

Uninstalled and reinstalled both Power Manager and the Power Management driver and it did not solve the issue.

[BrentTH]

This is a link to a screenshot of my Power Manager.  Like I said, its not just the Power Manager not recognizing the amount of charge on the battery, the battery itself will not charge when hooked into AC power and if I remove the battery with no AC power, the computer dies.

http://imgur.com/qn0B6

[JameZ]

@BrentTH,

If that's the case, I would recommend to send this laptop to the service depot to get it checked.

//JameZ

[Melman]

Just had this crop up on one of my T420's - was reported by a user yesterday. Just did ran the update of the power manager 20-30 minutes ago. The battery had a 57% charge when I swapped it with another T420 - and checks out as fine from the power manager - but the laptop immediately hibernates when disconnected from power. I did note there is a BIOS update available so that's my next step - any other users have this issue?

[ExJamJus]

@Melman,

My advice is better not update the BIOS since the laptop might hibernate if the AC is pulled.

Try to run the battery reset on Power Manager and see if it helps.

[Melman]

Thanks ExJamJus - No access to run Battery Reset - it acts like it's not even attached. As a result, can't run the BIOS update. Looks like this one will need a service call. 

[ExJamJus]

Yeah, guess you got to contact support to get the laptop checked.