Why your Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Battery light flashing?

this migth fix your Lenovo battery  ThinkPad X61 problem;

  • Go to your power settings by right clicking on the desktop and select Properties> click the Screen Saver tab> click Power.
  • Under Power schemes select select all of the choices to never.
  • Plug the power supply into the laptop and wait till it reaches 100% and stop charging..
  • Disconnect the power supply and let the laptop discharge completly untill it heibernates.
  • Reconect the power supply and let the laptop charge complely again, then go back into the Lenovo X61 Battery power settings and resume the previous settings.

If the laptop was not plugged in then there wasn’t anything maintaining the charge level in the battery. All batteries will self-discharge and will eventually discharge until they have zero charge left. LiIon batteries have a low self-discharge but they also have a protection circuit built in. This draws a small current and makes the self-discharge seem higher than it actually is. The protection circuit is there for several reasons. One is that if the cells in a LiIon battery are discharged to deeply, they can be damaged and dangerous when used. The protection circuit will apparently kick in and prevent the battery from being recharged. It is possible this is what has happened. If the charge level dropped to low while you were away, then the protection circuit would report that the battery was no good. I would not expected five weeks to be enough time for this to happen unless the battery charge was at a low level before you went away. Or the battery was already in a bad state and wasn’t retaining its charge. Note: Discharging the battery to 0% while using should not trigger this. The zero charge level reported is when the cells in the battery are still at a safe level.

I have seen claims that they can be fixed. From memory, it requires disassembling the battery and playing with the electronics. Or, if the cells in the battery are truly dead, it will require replacing the cells. Both of these are considered dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing.

other battery charging  info:

I have a Dell inspiron 1501, and i also had the “Plugged in, not charging” problem, the problem lies not in the laptop nor the power brick itself, bu the cord that runs from the charger to the laptop, due to the infamous “exploding battery” incidents companies started to use a 3-wire conductor, Ground, V+ and a data signal, this last one tells the laptop the electrical specs of the charger and if its a OEM one, if it is it charges, if not it disables charging the battery. so the problem is that the manufacturers makes this data signal cable hair thin and it usually breaks after some time, so the laptop doesn’t get the charger info and disables the charging circuits,,,, but the charger itself is good.
to solve my problem what i did was to open the charger, and replaced the cable with a thicker 3 or 4 wire one, but you also have to adapt the plug from the original cable.
3rd party charger usually only have the ground and V+ conductors and no data signal one so the laptop will never charge.
 it started saying not charging and it would sometimes charge if you wiggle the cord near the laptop.  the cord i’m referring to is the round one on the DC side( brick to laptop) and not the one that plugs to the AC wall receptacle and the power brick.