Levovo Thinkpad “waiting to charge” on Linux – The Fix

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Problem: some Thinkpads have two batteries, and sometimes the PC gets confused and won’t charge the 2nd one because the 1st one is reporting 100% charge. That 100% appears to be telling the PC that charging is complete, while battery number 2 is being ignored. Btw, they identify as BAT0 and BAT1 in reality.

If you see the message “x% – waiting to charge” while using Linux on a Thinkpad here is what you do:

• Boot into BIOS by pressing Enter then F1 during boot.
• In the BIOS go to Config > Power > Disable Battery.
• A confirmation popup appears telling you the computer will shut down.
  Choose yes/ok to shut down.
• Remove charging cable.
  The computer will not boot while there’s no power cable and the battery is disabled.
• Wait 10 seconds ( optional 😀 ).
• Attach power cable and boot.
  Battery should be charging again.

Don’t waste time with lscpi, or grepping /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0 or any other command line magic, it won’t work.

This fix will work for Ubuntu, Arch btw, the OG Slackware, etc, because it’s done in the BIOS and not the OS.