[Cialug] Linux on Lenovo Laptop - Battery Issue

[chris rheinherren]

I have a perlexing issue. I had a Windows 8.1 Lenovo laptop. It was out of
warrenty so I decided to wipe it and install Ubuntu (17.04) on it.

Since this laptop was plugged into AC power most of the time when it ran
Windows, Lenovo had a Power Management Utility to keep the battery charged
to 60% instead of 100% to preserve the battery life to some degree.

I didn't think anything about this utility when I wiped the system thinking
that those settings would be wiped along with everything else that was
Windows.

However, once the system came back up with Ubuntu. The battery shows at
59.9% of a full charge. If I take it off AC and use the battery and then
put it back on AC the charging stops at the 59.9% level again. So it seems
that the settings survived the complete install wipe.

I've done some looking around and it appears that Lenovo has some Linux
battery utilities to change the charging thresholds for their ThinkPad
models but not for the regular Lenovo line. From what I can find on the
'net. The Windows power utility writes the threshold information to the
battery chip itself. So even shutting down the computer and removing the
battery doesn't reset the battery.

I've posted to the Lenovo forum for help on this and to the Ubuntu forums
as well. But gonna check here to see if anyone has any other ideas. I don't
really want to reinstall Windows. I do have a backup of the system on an
external USB harddrive but I wasn't able to boot from that backup either
and I don't have a Windows 8.1 disc at all.

If nothing else works I might just replace the battery.


Thanks
Chris