thinkpad battery issue

[smthemc]

I have an A21M Thinkpad and just bought an extended length 6600mAh battery to replace the 5400mAh I had before. It registers the capacity correctly, but will not charge the battery pack past 60%. At that point it says "no activity". I have tried running the battery all the way down to hibernation and then charging, but there has not been any change. Is there possibly a problem with the battery or is there some change that needs to be made to the BIOS, etc. to allow it to charge fully? I really need to be able to use the full capacity of the battery as I travel for work.

Thanks for any help!

 

[C2T]

While it can be that your battery is bad--I would not put that at the top of the list of possible issues. First you should insure that you have the latest bios update for your system. Also update the Thinkpad power manager software.

You should run the battery gauge reset. In "control panel', "power options", then the "power manager" tab and hit the "launch power manager" button. Go to the "battery information" tab and then hit the "battery maintenance" tab. Make sure the "charge threshold" is set to "always fully charge". You should hit the "perform reset". It will take some time but it will verify that the guage program is properly set.

Hope this helps...

 

[smthemc]

Thanks for the suggestions. I updated the BIOS and PM software, but my machine does not support the batt maintenance features. There was no change for days, then today it decided to charge fully (cycle count got up to 4, maybe had something to do with it). I'm good with it as I get almost 6 hrs now.

Thanks!