Maintenance

Here you can find general hints about keeping your ThinkPad in good shape. Look at your models category page for IBMs official maintenance guide for that model.

Battery Treatment

Battery life expanding guide

Battery Type	NiCd	NiMH	Lithium ion
General	always do complete discharge/charge cycles avoid exposing the battery (or notebook) to excessive heat	always do complete discharge/charge cycles avoid exposing the battery (or notebook) to excessive heat	never completely discharge the battery, partial dis-/recharges are better remove battery when on AC avoid exposing the battery (or notebook) to excessive heat
Charging	discharge before charging	discharge before charging	avoid charging if battery is nearly full keep notebook off while charging
Storage	almost discharged cool and dry	almost discharged cool and dry	never fully charged or discharged, ideally at about 40% cool and dry, but do not freeze them

Hint:

Newer Thinkpads have software that lets you set charge thresholds. If you use your Laptop at a desk, use this software to keep your batteries in good condition.

The problem with 600 series batteries

ThinkPad 600 power management causes batteries to die before they should. Read more about this on the associated problem page.

Reviving Batteries

Some people experience sudden drops in their batteries capacity.

A way to get these batteries back to full capacity is to run the "Battery Rundown" function of IBMs "PC Doctor for DOS". The program is downloadable from IBMs support site as three floppy disk images. For those who do not have a floppy, David Smith prepared a bootable CD image from the T22 floppy images.

External Sources

• IBM Support - Extending battery life
• IBM Support - Battery troubleshooting

IBM Benchmark

• Battery University
• BatteryUniversitys info about prolonging lithium ion batteries
• prolonging lithium ion batteries in Buchmanns Battery FAQ

Cleaning the Display

If you discover markings that look like originating from the TrackPoint or keyboard, or for information on how to avoid these, look at this page.

External Sources

• IBM Support - LCD care and cleaning instructions
• IBM Support - System cleaning instructions

Dealing with spilling accidents

1. Don't panic.
2. Don't flip or tilt the computer to prevent the liquid from spreading all over the inside of the case.
3. Shut down the OS and turn off the power:
   1. Unplug the computer.
   2. Remove the battery.
4. Tilt the computer so that everything that leaked into the case can flow out the same way.
5. Allow the computer to dry before switching it on again.
6. For minor accidents this might already be sufficient. For major flooding you should either bring the computer to a dealer who knows how to open and clean it from inside. Or you can read the Hardware Maintenance Manual, open, clean, and dry the computer yourself.

See also Act quickly, carefully if you spill on laptops on MoneySense.ca

Harddisk Backup

• How to copy a Linux installation
• How to copy a Windows installation

External Sources

• Guide on copying Windows 2000/XP to another partition

Recovering BIOS passwords

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External Sources

• IBM Support - Lost or forgotten password