"0190: Critical low-battery error" on Lenovo Thinkpad T540p

Question

When powering on, a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T540p (which worked for a few months without any problems) shows "0190: Critical low-battery error".

Although the Thinkpad splash screen says to press Enter to see the BIOS settings, that doesn't work. The system immediately shuts down.

The manual says for this error:

Solution: The computer turns off, because the battery is low. Connect the ac power adapter to the computer and charge the battery, or replace the battery with a fully charged one.

Unfortunately the laptop won't boot when plugged into AC either. And I've also tried removing the battery and just using AC, and it won't boot at all (and doesn't even show the error).

I've tried unplugging the coin cell CMOS battery and plugging it back in (since I read on forums that resetting settings in this way might help).

The only effect was that now I also see a new error upon boot:

0251 : System CMOS Checksum bad - Default configuration used. Real Time Clock Error - Check Date and Time settings.

I've also tried replacing the main battery and also the charger. Neither helped.

A friend uses her Thinkpad T540p plugged into the wall without a battery.

The fact that mine can't do this (boot up while relying on AC power from the wall, leaving the main battery removed) implies to me that the problem is neither the main battery nor the charger nor the coin cell battery but instead is the wiring between the AC charger port and the rest of the system.

That is, even when a known "good" charger is plugged into the power port, the power isn't flowing through to the system or to charging a dead battery.

What should the next step of my diagnosis (and fix) be?

It's confusing to me that the computer worked fine for months, and now that the warranty is expired, it won't charge or boot up, even though I can't think of any event that would have caused this problem.

Solution 1

UPDATE:

I now think the charging port is not broken and that the problem was the AC charging pack/cord.

Remember, my friend and I had each purchased a Thinkpad T540p from the same seller.

But we discovered that the seller had sent me a 90 W 20 V AC charging adapter that doesn't work (I don't know if it's faulty or just incompatible with the T540p), but the same seller sent to my friend a 65 W PA-1650-721S Lenovo P/N SA10J20149 AC charging adapter, which does work (with both her laptop and mine).

It's confusing because we'd tried using my friend's 65 W cord with my laptop a few days ago unsuccessfully.

But it's working now.

I wonder if it suddenly started working because I:

1. Put my laptop battery into my friend's laptop temporarily to charge it
2. Moved it back into my laptop
3. Booted my laptop into Windows
4. Installed the "critical" power management driver update

Now my friend's 65 W charger works for my laptop (as it does for hers) even though the 90 W charger that came with this laptop doesn't work. So I've returned the 90 W charger to the seller, and I think they will send a replacement.

Solution 2

Same problem with my T430 here and I changed the power cord.

Problem solved.

Comments

[John]

I assume you mean power supply inside the laptop as the charger (AC Adapter) was replaced along with the battery.

[harrymc]

@John: Yes of course.

[Community]

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[Community]

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.