Laptop battery takes days to charge

[Ottavio Caruso]

I have a run down, battered old Thinkpad that I basically use as a desktop at home because the motherboard is cracked and doesn't stand being carried around. Apart from that, it used to work well. I connect it to my other laptop via ssh that acts as a file server and poor man's AP.

What happens now is that the battery drains even when the charger is connected. If I switch the laptop off (I mean completely off, not hibernated or suspended), it would take 3 days to bring the battery back to 100%, and provided I don't turn it on in the meantime.

The green light on the motherboard blinks when the battery is in charging mode but is solid when it is waiting to charge.

According to the battery diagnostics, the battery has a capacity of 83%. Not great, but still good enough. My other laptop (different Thinkpad) has a battery capacity of 10% but it doesn't drain when the charger is connected.

I have set the battery limits (tlp

to start charging when the battery goes to 1% (yes, 1%), otherwise the charger goes completely bananas. Then I have to manually set the charger to charge ("tlp fullcharge") and shut the laptop.

Considering that the laptop is almost dead and that a new battery is about £50 and a compatible charger is about £20, how do I know exactly if the problem is due to:

a) the battery; b) the charger, or c) the motherboard?

I would also hate throwing it away, because I am a good citizen and the only authorized skip for electronics in Birmingham is miles away.

[Theo]

I would be investigating the charger as the first port of call.

If the laptop has USB-C and you have a USB-C charger you could try that (although often phone chargers aren't powerful enough, but other USB-C laptop chargers are).

You could investigate whether the laptop provides any details about the battery and charger, eg the voltage and current being supplied, and whether the charger indicates its wattage. It could be that communication with the charger (often a third pin in the barrel connector) is broken and so the laptop only trickle charges.

Did the laptop previously work with this charger? Sometimes the drainage when running can happen because the charger is underpowered for demands of the specific laptop under load, but that likely wouldn't mean it taking 3 days to charge when off.

I would also be looking to see if the battery or laptop is getting warm when charging - ie if it takes 3 days to charge, is that because the charger is offering full power but the laptop or battery is converting it to heat, or if nothing is taking power (either the charger isn't offering it or the laptop isn't taking it).

If needed, you may be able to hand it in to a retailer who sell other kinds of electronics.

Theo

[Scott]

I had that with my iPad. It was taking quite a long time to charge (and not working while charging) until I realised I was using an iPhone charger. When I tried an 18 watt charger, it speeded up.

Or even put it on eBay for £1 for someone looking for parts?

[Ottavio Caruso]

Thanks. My feeling is that it doesn't even trickle charge. I am 100% for blaming the charger but I asked around on IRC and pretty much everybody blamed the battery.

Neither the battery nor the charger gets warm but the room is quite cold.

I'll try the upower when I'm home.

[Ottavio Caruso]

Am 17/01/2024 um 14:29 schrieb Theo:

Hi, this is the output from "upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 "

e130: Wed Jan 17 17:43:23 2024

native-path: BAT1 vendor: SANYO model: 45N1057 serial: 1455 power supply: yes updated: Wed 17 Jan 2024 17:43:17 GMT (6 seconds ago) has history: yes has statistics: yes battery present: yes rechargeable: yes state: pending-charge warning-level: none energy: 12.14 Wh energy-empty: 0 Wh energy-full: 51.57 Wh energy-full-design: 62.16 Wh energy-rate: 0.380246 W voltage: 10.448 V charge-cycles: N/A percentage: 23% capacity: 82.9633% technology: lithium-ion icon-name: 'battery-low-charging-symbolic' History (rate):

Any clue?

[alan_m]

Have you lost the battery status or battery calibration data? You will have to Google to see various suggested reset mechanisms.

On one laptop I once owned I had charging rate problems with a failing battery but on replacing it I was stuck with the same charging symptoms until I found the procedure to reset the status and later to recalibrate the battery indication.

[Theo]

energy-rate: 0.380246 W

suggests 300mW is either going in or going out, not very much. Was it on the power adapter at the time?

state: pending-charge

seems to suggest it's connected but not charging. The 45N1057 is a 6-cell

11.1V battery (3s2p) and so 10.448V isn't too far out of spec, so it's not like the battery has gone down to zero. Health wise it looks ok from the above.

Searching 'thinkpad battery pending-charge' comes up with other people who have had this problem, but no clear answers. One thing they do say is this can happen if an underpowered power adapter is used.

Perhaps order a new power adapter from some vendor with easy returns, and see if that fixes it?

Theo

[Roland Perry]

In message <uo8f7k$1vu4m$ [e-mail], at 11:55:28 on Wed, 17 Jan

2024, Ottavio Caruso [e-mail] remarked:

My solution to battery-charging issues (which works most of the time, and never seems to worsen the situation) is to stick the item in the freezer overnight.

[Paul]

So you know it's the charger then. If the charger was running full blast, something would get warm. Or, something would "pop".

One way to collect additional symptoms, is with one of these. I have one like it (the North American version with smaller outlet hole).

( )

*******

The first phase of charging is CC, the second phase is CV (constant voltage).

The potential behaviors are quite complicated, when you have a think about it. Good luck.

The diagram may not highlight it, but the battery is not allowed to initiate a charge, if the initial three-cell pack has too low an open circuit voltage. A battery can get into a permanent "will-not-charge" state if that happens. Well, that's not happening to yours -- we know the charger has "initiated" a charge cycle, but it takes a couple days, which is not correct. This means your battery pack, has stayed above the minimum value, the whole time. That's good.

This could potentially mean, the CC phase is using way way to small a current flow. A charger problem.

It's your observation that the charger has "initiated" a charge cycle, that constrains who is at fault. If you had offered fewer observations, it would be a more ambiguous situation.

The Kill-a-Watt meter should have a particular "shape" to the consumption curve. The first charging phase uses the most power. The second (topping up) phase uses less power. The power is pretty low from the wall, at charge termination.

Paul

[Theo]

No you don't. This is not dumb Li-ion charging, this is a smart charging system. Not charging could be:

1. The power brick not offering sufficient voltage / amps / shutting down.
2. The battery not signalling to the motherboard that it's happy to be charged.
3. The motherboard blocking charging current from reaching the battery; the power brick is a power supply not a charger, that circuit is on the motherboard. That circuit has to work, but it is controlled by software.

All the stars need to align before it will charge, and non-alignment could be a fault but could also be related to firmware deciding something is wrong and not turning things on. We don't always get much visibility in what's going on on the motherboard - we can probe the voltages with a multimeter but the firmware deciding not to enable the MOSFETs is something we can't inspect.

We are trying to puzzle out which it could be, from the limited information available. From what it appears the laptop detects charging voltage (the laptop says 'not charging' rather than 'on battery'). Everything we've managed to ascertain so far suggests the battery is happy. The battery also does charge, but slowly.

So seems like something is wrong on the motherboard (ie firmware) that's limiting the charge current, and the question is what that might be. Could be a motherboard fault, could be a charger not behaving, could be firmware not reading the charger correctly.

Since changing the charger is the easiest thing to try, that's my first suggestion. My other thought would be to try Windows on it, and see if it also misbehaves in Windows, and whether there are any firmware updates available (some Linux distros will also offer them).

Theo

[Animal]

If the battery runs the laptop (ie with mains power not connected) I'd conclude the battery is workable. The caring system is not providing enough current. Not enough info to conclude more, but that's a start.

[Ottavio Caruso]

On Linux, I have done a few recalibrations (tlp recalibrate). The software will make sure that the battery goes to 0% and then back to

100%. This seems to improve the situation for a few days and then it goes back to rubbish.

[Ottavio Caruso]

Am 17/01/2024 um 20:50 schrieb Roland Perry:

The battery or the charger?

[Ottavio Caruso]

Ok thanks Paul.

[Brian Gaff]

Batteries often have circuits built in so as a module it sounds like you have got two differently faulty batteries. one, the 10% on has some kind of high resistance fault, and the other a self discharge fault. Now I know many people love opening up these batteries and replacing cells, but in the end they really need all to be of the matched capacity or you will find that the good cells reverse charge the ones that go down first, this, to use a technical term, accelerates their knackeredness!

I guess you could get an after market replacement cheaper, but as to reliability, its anyone's guess. 50 quid does not sound too bad for an HP part to me. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The Battery, but its hardly a fix. As for the Motherboard, well surely if its cracked it would affect other parts of the pc? Araldite is good for physical repairs if you can mix some pcb dust with it all the better. Make sure any fractured tracks are bridged. This can be impossible if the board is multi layer though. Brian

[Pamela]

Rather than measure mains power input to the charger, it would be more useful to measure the power the charger delivers to the battery. There are cheap small inline meters which do this but, unfortunately, the connectors on the laptop may not be standard.

Measuring like this allows you to estimated the total power absorbed by the battery and, secondly, to observe at what point the battery stops absorbing power. The chances are that there is no signigficant power delivery a long time before the three days mentioned are up. This extended period may actually be a very low current charge until eventually, one day, the battery voltage is high enough for the firmware/OS to recognise it as full.

This battery isn't going to get better and these problems aren't going to stop. At some point this isn't worth the effort.

[Fredxx]

An AC power meter will indicate the quiescent current when not charging (disconnected) and when charging, making an assumption of say 90% efficiency. It's a lot better then nothing.

It's not obvious it's the battery? Could be the charger, or the charging circuitry in the laptop.

[Roland Perry]

In message <uoatvb$2hmac$ [e-mail], at 10:19:23 on Thu, 18 Jan

2024, Ottavio Caruso [e-mail] remarked:

The item with the battery inside.

[Theo]

Reminds me that the solution to a complete DOA laptop (PSU good, battery good, power button did nothing) waa to change the CMOS coin cell battery. Evidently the embedded controller which does settings and power management wouldn't start without it.

Another thing for the OP to try...

Theo