Welcome guest. Before posting on our computer help forum, you must register. Click here it's easy and free.

Author Topic: Lenovo Z50-70 battery plugged in not charging, won't charge no matter what I do  (Read 5202 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

AnonPerson

    Topic Starter


    Starter

    • Experience: Familiar
    • OS: Other
    Hi,

    I have a Lenovo Z50-70 running Windows 8.1. The laptop is relatively new, bought in Jan. 2015.

    Some time ago, the original battery suddenly started to have a problem where it would say 45% available, plugged in, not charging. No matter what fixes I tried (after looking through a lot of articles, posts, comments, etc.), nothing made the battery start charging again. It always stays at 45%. Also the battery light/indicator on the front of the laptop is always blinking white.

    So I got a new battery, put it in hoping that it would work and charge up to 100%, but the new battery is having exactly the same problem as the original old one! It will only charge up to 45%, then it says plugged in not charging. The battery light is again always blinking white.

    What do I do? How can this be fixed? What's going on?

    Appreciate any help. Thank you very much.

    Calum

    • Moderator


    • Egghead

      Thanked: 238
      • Yes
      • Yes
    • Certifications: List
    • Computer: Specs
    • Experience: Beginner
    • OS: Other
    Sounds like it may be either the charger or the charging port at fault here.  However, I have a couple of questions...
    1. Does the battery charge increase at all if you leave the machine turned off and plugged in, or does it still report 45%?
    2. Does it power on when only on battery power?
    3. Was the new battery a new, genuine Lenovo part?

    There seem to be a lot of people reporting similar issues with this model unfortunately.

    AnonPerson

      Topic Starter


      Starter

      • Experience: Familiar
      • OS: Other
      Re# 1: Haven't tried that but I somehow doubt that that would work either...Will look into it...

      Re#2: It works well when on  battery power but the battery shows only 1hr and a half left and the amount left starts going down and down...

      Re#3: Yes, I believe so.

      AnonPerson

        Topic Starter


        Starter

        • Experience: Familiar
        • OS: Other
        Maybe its worth buying a new charger and trying it (I only have the one that came w/the laptop when it was bought), although somehow I doubt that would fix the problem since the current charger is giving enough power to run the laptop currently, even if the battery won't charge...Also the laptop runs when there's no battery inside, just connected to the charger.

        Geek-9pm


          Mastermind
        • Geek After Dark
        • Thanked: 1026
          • Gekk9pm bnlog
        • Certifications: List
        • Computer: Specs
        • Experience: Expert
        • OS: Windows 10
        Maybe its worth buying a new charger and trying it (I only have the one that came w/the laptop when it was bought), although somehow I doubt that would fix the problem since the current charger is giving enough power to run the laptop currently, even if the battery won't charge...Also the laptop runs when there's no battery inside, just connected to the charger.
        Wrong. You are making an assumption about how charging works. the charging mechanism may have a defect in manufacturing that prevents a full charge.

        A laptop computer power system has three levels of voltage. The high level is when the battery is fully charged. A lower level is when the battery is about half of full corkage and the third  level is where the laptop will auto shut down.

        On some systems** the levels are:
        14 volts
        12 volts
        10 volts
        Ianthe above, the charger can keep the laptop running and give  half charge to the battery at 12 bolts. But if the charger does not rewash 14 volts, it will never charge the battery to its full potential.

        Other issues:
        The battery vindicator may be bad.
        The local line voltage is not right for that  unit. (Some exports  are 220 volt only.)

        Have you contacted the maker of your laptop? 

        ** This can vary widely. Look here:
        http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/31618/why-do-many-laptops-run-on-19-volts
        Quote
            Now there're laptops that use external power supplies rated at exactly 19 volts. That isn't a multiple of anything suitable. Puzzles me a lot.
        ...
        This is not a design question as posed, but it has relevance to design of battery charging syste
        « Last Edit: June 19, 2016, 04:04:16 PM by Geek-9pm »

        AnonPerson

          Topic Starter


          Starter

          • Experience: Familiar
          • OS: Other
          The charger and the battery used to charge very well up to 100% as expected until not that long ago when suddenly this happened. If there was some defect the defect wouldn't just suddenly appear out of the blue over a year later, when it had been working perfectly well all that time before...If there was a defect that defect would have been immediately present from the beginning, wouldn't it?, right from the first time the laptop was plugged in.

          Also, (although everything is made in china), the laptop and battery were bought from Lenovo's US site, and made and purchased for use in the US, so the voltage must be correct for US usage, it wasn't purchased in another country or for use in another country.

          It seems that a lot of other people all over various forums are having this "battery plugged in, not charging" problem with many kinds of laptops of all different brands and computer types. Somebody somewhere else suggested that it might probably be a motherboard problem, some type of bad/damaged/faulty charging circuit. But how could it just suddenly die like that when it was working perfectly well all these months before?

          Geek-9pm


            Mastermind
          • Geek After Dark
          • Thanked: 1026
            • Gekk9pm bnlog
          • Certifications: List
          • Computer: Specs
          • Experience: Expert
          • OS: Windows 10
          This is dictation.
          In general, this forum focuses on best  software adjustments and updates and to a lesser extent on hardware troubleshooting. In general terms, most users did troubleshooting by means of substitution. In your case you would obtain an external charging system for that battery you have. From what you said, it would appear that you now have two good batteries and one laptop that will not charge the batteries. The logical thing is to get an external device for charging the batteries without any dependency on the laptop.
          You can buy such devices from stores like new egg or Amazon and other sources.
          Now if the moderator of this forum has the forbearance  to put up with one of my rants and rambles, I will try to give a concise summary of something that most laymen do not get involved in. Statistical analysis of electronic component failures shows some general patterns and some exceptions to the general rules. Usually electronic components will fail within the first few hours or first few days of usage. However, there are some exceptions to this general rule. Sometimes these are called esoteric exceptions. Which just means that was very unexpected.
          For example, electrolytic capacitors. They have a reputation for failures at unexpected times. In the manufacturing process some small companies that make electrolytic think they can get away with short-term testing and they release onto the market low-cost components that will not last a long period of time. This has been well documented elsewhere, I am not making this up.
          To a lesser extent, other components can fail. These include Zener diodes, power transistors and linear voltage regulators. Additionally, there are more complex voltage regulator chips that because of their complexity can have an unknown failure rate.
          Asked to motherboard failure, a component failure is also a motherboard failure if you don't know which component that is. If the component cannot be isolated, the technician will simply send the motherboard back to the factory and see if they can fix it. The common failures in the motherboard are bad solder joints and in some cases a broken trace. A trace could be broken by mishandling or simply by oxidation. During the manufacturing process something could happen to motherboard that will shorten its life. Motherboards are usually tested for a period of several hours or even days before they are shipped out to the companies that manufacture laptop computers. But even so, once in a while a rare thing will happen, the tested certified motherboard will fail after several months of use. Is that very rare? Yes, very rare. But if 20,000 motherboards were manufactured there is the possibility that at least a few will go bad.
          The most common failure of charging system is the battery itself. But just because it's the most common problem does not translate into it always been the problem. I'm going to refer you to a link on Wikipedia that is in general a good coverage of the subject of electronic component failure.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_of_electronic_components

          Thanks to the moderator of the forum for letting me give a rather verbose explanation of how component failures can be very unexpected and unpredictable.
           :)