Unlocking my Lenovo laptop battery (Matthew Chapman)

Two months ago, I bought a new battery for my Lenovo laptop (a ThinkPad X230T). I was about to go away on holidays and wanted a battery that could last me through a plane flight; the original battery was by then barely lasting ten minutes. Little did I know that I was about to be in for an adventure.

I installed the new battery, and everything went fine for a few hours… that is, until I had to plug the laptop in to charge. The battery was not charging. Odd. I rebooted, only to find this message displayed on the screen by the BIOS:

The system does not support batteries that are not genuine Lenovo-made or authorized. The system will continue to boot, but may not charge unauthorized batteries.

ATTENTION: Lenovo has no responsibility for the performance or safety of unauthorized batteries, and provides no warranties for failures or damage arising out of their use. Press the ESC key to continue.

“May not charge”? That was quite a non-definite message, but this battery was definitely not charging, even with the laptop off. Oh dear.

https://www.zmatt.net/unlocking-my-lenovo-laptop-part-1/

HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11041210