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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.

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8 Answers 8

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

Problem solved.

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  • ++ - charger was fine, once I replaced the power cord. Blue Diamond, part #5226
    – OMG Ponies
    Commented Feb 16, 2023 at 4:14
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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.

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I suggest you take the machine to a computer repair store. The input jack on the computer or some circuit problem farther in means (a) the battery did not charge leaving it critically low and (b) it will not run on the AC adapter. So either way you have a hardware problem

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If I had to guess, I would say that the power-supply needs replacement, since your problems seem to be mostly about power.

Of course, a workshop can do a better job of analyzing the problem.

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    I assume you mean power supply inside the laptop as the charger (AC Adapter) was replaced along with the battery.
    – anon
    Commented Dec 28, 2019 at 18:31
  • @John: Yes of course.
    – harrymc
    Commented Dec 28, 2019 at 18:32
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When this happened to me I disconnected the DC cord from the laptop and the wall disconnected the main cord from the adapter blew it off, cleaned the pins on the battery and held the power button on the laptop to discharge it then put the battery back in plugged in the cord and it worked I think it may just be Stat build up in some cases but it worked.

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In some cases it is the charger (the charging point) and other times the battery that does not charge.

In my case, it was the charger.

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  • 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.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Feb 21, 2022 at 11:35
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This critical error appear on my lonovo t440, to solve i push and hold the star button for 30 seconds, until the laptop sound beep and tuen on the Fn light.

After this plugged the laptop for a few minutes and tunr on again, the critical low batery message desapear and boot normally. But the laptop now run only with AC Cable plugged.

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    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.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Feb 22, 2022 at 17:44
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I don't know if this topic is closed, but I had the same problem. I managed to solve it by draining the battery completely. I kept pressing the power button until 0% was reached. After that the Windows OS launched normally. Let me know if it works !

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  • OP already said that it was due to a broken charger.
    – Toto
    Commented Sep 8, 2022 at 9:49

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