Question Random shutdowns with Lenovo 80E4 (G40-80)

[dorker]

GF's laptop has been randomly shutting down lately and the task of fixing it naturally falls to me. You know how it is. On to the symptoms...

The main problem is that the machine will just die (as if the battery were suddenly pulled) without warning.

It has a new extra-capacity battery (see link at the end), but gf reports that SOMETIMES the battery will drain extremely fast. Sometimes it will last a while, however.

After hours of being off, you can turn it on and usually it will go for 5-10 minutes before dying. Then it dies. Power it on again and it will only last between 3 and 60 seconds.

Occasionally it will die during start-up and throw the following blue screen with error message:

"Your PC couldn't start properly
"A required device isn't connected or couldn't be accessed
"Error code: 0xc000000e

Finally, the problem first appeared after I cloned the HDD and replaced it with an SSD, but not immediately.

This feels like a hardware problem. But I still want to update the BIOS and see if there are any software fixes before opening the machine up.

Battery link

Any tips? Really needing some leads here! Thanks.

 

[PC Tailor]

Easiest way to see if it is probably software would be to try and boot it into safe mode and see if the shut down stills occurs. If it does, you can probably bet it is hardware.

Have you monitored CPU and GPU temps under load?
Does the laptop die even when plugged in?

You could update the BIOS first, however I'd be tempted to run safe mode first, as if the shutdown continues, theres nothing to say the laptop won't shutdown during the BIOS update and risk bricking the motherboard.

 

[dorker]

To provide more information to the questions you asked,

Yes, it was shutting down when plugged in.
The temperatures are within normal range.

I booted into safe mode and that seemed to work, or at least extend its longevity. It was hard to say, because I left it for several hours in standby while in safe mode, and when I came back it had shut down. Deciding to take the risk, I booted into safe mode and updated the BIOS to the latest version.

With the new BIOS, gf has not complained of any random shutdowns since. However, the battery will sometimes discharge extremely fast. This is a known issue. At other times, it will discharge normally.

Right now I suspect the charge controller, or perhaps a physical component on the board like a voltage regulator, is dodgy. Maybe it's some sort of safeguard which doesn't kill the machine outright if it's missing but will cause shutdowns in the event of current spikes. Just speculation.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot Lenovo's power management from the soft- or firmware side? The laptop doesn't use the OEM software to do battery control, just Windows 10 as far as I know.

Thanks!