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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 369X Battery Troubleshooting

I kept debating on what I should blog about next, and couldn't decide firmly on any one thing, so haven't written anything in a while.  Until now.

Today I resolved an issue that I want to address in this post related to a Lenovo ThinkPad Helix 369X series with a battery problem.

Some history:  The Lenovo had been dropped and was sent in for a screen replacement.

The symptoms:  Since the Lenovo was returned after repair by the manufacturer, the tablet portion hadn't worked properly regarding the battery.  When the tablet was on the keyboard dock (which has its own secondary battery), it would stay on but battery wouldn't last.  If you took the tablet off of the keyboard dock, the tablet would not turn on unless the power cable was plugged in.  If the tablet was on and then the power cable was removed, the tablet would die/shut off immediately.

The trial and error process:  So after some brief research I found this forum -

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Tablet-and/Helix-Battery-Plugged-in-not-charging/td-p/1117953

- that lead me to want to try a keyboard dock firmware update (although I recalled having done this firmware update for this particular device before).

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds035554

After downloading and preparing to install the firmware update, it did indeed show that I already had the files on the machine from installing it at a prior time, however I went with it still.  It returned with an error that the primary battery (tablet battery) needs to be "present and charged" (or something along those lines) in order to install the firmware.  Needless to say the install aborted.

Then that led me to do some additional research.
I installed the Lenovo Power Management Driver for Windows 8.1
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/migr-4gxpeg
and then went to the control panel and opened the Lenovo Settings and Management icon.  I was able to go to the Battery section, and saw that "No battery installed" was listed for the primary/tablet battery.  Hmmm..

I also found a battery firmware update for the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix,
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds001322
and upon installing and attempting to run it, it stated that "no battery was found to update the firmware for."

Last I checked the basic settings in the Windows Device Manager under "Batteries" and nothing was really listed that represented a battery inside...

By this time I was very suspicious needless to say.  Now, we had called Lenovo a few days earlier about this and they had mentioned it is probably just some drivers related to the connection of the battery.  During all of this troubleshooting I had been on the phone waiting for support from them for 45 minutes.  By that time I decided "Screw it" and cracked open the tablet to see if 1) is there even a battery inside and 2) is it connected.  Considering Lenovo had repaired it and had taken it apart, it was highly possible that something wasn't connected right.

The resolution:  Using my handy case cracker, and remembering what I had seen about taking a Lenovo apart in this video from a previous project with this specific Lenovo -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgqASDqRSnI
I CAREFULLY opened up the tablet and lo and behold the battery cable connector was not fully in place.  Or in place at all really.

So after spending about an hour on hold with Lenovo to fix a battery problem, it turns out it was a hardware issue all along, which they would not have figured out over the phone anyway most likely.

While it seems so simple to just check for hardware, I feel that hardware is not necessarily the first thing to check with something like a tablet because of the more complex design of the hardware and having to take it apart in the first place if you don't know what you are doing (or don't have a youtube video to watch to show you how lol)

All in all, if your Lenovo ThinkPad Helix battery isn't working, and none of the drivers, firmware or any other fixes don't seem to be working - go ahead and make sure the battery is even present and connected properly!






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