Thinkpads Forum

Anyone know what the risk is with removing the battery on a P1 Gen3 without first disabling the internal battery in the BIOS? What might break?

As long as the machine is not in 'sleep' modus (i.e. fully shut down), there should be no problem whatsoever.
Just be careful not to break the battery-socket and/or -cable.

OK. Well I didn't read the instructions properly so I took the back off and the battery out (had to look at a video to see how that super-flat connector worked as it's not obvious) without disabling the battery in the bios first. (I've taken a lot of laptops to bits and 'change stuff in the BIOS first' is a new one on me. The machine was hard-powered-down with the power button held for 10 secs so I'm reasonably sure that's properly 'off'.

However on reassembly the battery just read 0%. The machine would still run on the battery so it was still working electrically but the battery state was no longer readable.
I thought maybe it needed to resync with the battery to get a percentage so I let it run on battery for a while. After letting it discharge on battery power it's still not charging. A little charging symbol is shown along with 0% (for more than a day now).

I'm not sure how to proceed to work out what's actually wrong. It there a hardware problem or some kind of software resync needed?

I'm reasonably sure I didn't do any damage to the connector, but I've not tried beeping it out yet to check that all 7 pins are connected.

Now you have found out "what will break" if you attempt to remove the battery improperly.

Were you not able to access the BIOS to disable the battery?