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Whenever my computer completely drains its battery (those rare cases when I use it until it turns off), after I plug it it wont charge. The battery indicator will show 0% and "Estimating..." where it should say how much time until fully charged. I know it is not just displaying jt wrong because if I unplug the laptop it turns off. My solution so far is to boot Windows, charge up to 1% and then boot back into Ubuntu. That works, so I know it's not the hardware.

What I am using: Thinkpad X1 Carbon 4th Gen, Ubuntu 16.04, I have TLP installed

ig343
  • 1,008

4 Answers4

3

I have documented a workaround for the said issue, which is applicable to ASUS notebook PC that I have been using since late-2014.

The workaround based on what I have documented in mid-2016:

  1. When the battery is empty, or when notebook PC is unable to power on, connect the notebook PC to the charger and start charging.

  2. Do not boot to Linux. The notebook PC should remain off whilst charging. Wait for 10~30 minutes, depending on charging rate.

  3. Afterwards, turn on the notebook PC and boot to Linux. Login to the desktop and confirm that the battery is charging from the Power Manager or using upower -d command in Terminal.

The important point is notebook PC should be turned off when charging battery from empty, otherwise charging will not start. Even suspend will prevent the battery from charging at all. I have observed that again and again, whenever I had left my notebook PC unused for weeks.

Note: Documented for ASUS X200MA, running Xubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit.

Firmware issues

Despite the workaround has worked for my notebook PC, I have thought of other issues that may be related to the question:

The latter may be influenced by proprietary firmware for power management, which can only be fully utilized by Windows operating system but not Linux. This may explain the condition when battery is empty, charging may start when running Windows but does not start when running Linux.

Battery treatment

There is one critical advice: Lithium ion battery should not be fully discharged or should not be used until empty (see Battery treatment on ThinkWiki).

Regardless of running Windows or Linux, the operating system supposedly has sane default settings to prevent the battery from fully discharged. As a result, the system will automatically suspend, hibernate or even shut down when battery level has reached to certain percentage. This however, may be changed by users.

TL;DR Forget Windows and Linux. Charge the battery from empty when the power is off. Battery should not be fully discharged because of potential damage or reduced battery life.

0

I faced a similar issue today, I left my laptop on sleep for 3-4 days, and when i opened it on 5th day, the battery is at 0%.

Charging the battery for around 24 hrs, helped me resolve the issue. now my battery is working fine, the issue was because the battery is completely drained, and it took some time to regain its power.

Sairam Gourishetty
  • 101
0

From your question it seems there is no problem in Charging. Just keep charging some longer time and it will start displaying expected time or charged %.

There might be some display related problem from s/w side. So just charge at least half an hour and then boot/start.

Prateek
  • 9
-1

Maybe it could be because Ubuntu uses more battery and resources than Windows. Just look at the minimum system requirements for each OS.

Ubuntu: 2 GHz dual core processor or better, 2 GB system memory, 25 GB of free hard drive space

Windows: Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit. Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS. Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver. Display: 800x600.

Windows obviously needs less resources from your computer because of the broad range of PCs that use it. Therefore, Ubuntu uses more resources from your PC, causing it to use more electricity.