Hp ZBook 17 g3 battery not charging issue

[piernov]

As usual everything needed is documented in https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...arging-circuit , the charging circuit always looks the same (as long as we're not talking about USB-C). That said a boardview can help in locating the components.

If there is no voltage on the battery rail when it is plugged in to the board then it is possibly in permanent failure, can also be confirmed by putting some voltage in the battery rail and checking if it is taking any current (and this also helps waking up the battery when the system is unable to do so).

[Neddsme]

UPDATE:

first of all apologies because i have been busy this last week i did not have time to work on this at all.

I was able to confirm that the battery was in permanent failure and it seemed to shut down the charging circuit possibly as a safety precaution am guessing.
Some of the voltage levels as pointed out do seem a bit off still, but without a working battery I was limited since the laptop works fine now on AC
but the battery charging was the only issue that was still uncertain.

I tried finding a replacement but all my local shops did not have this particular battery type in stock, and ordering one was gonna take a while. So I opted to reset the battery from its
permanent failure state since the cells were actually still in good shape (Less than 50mV imbalance overall).

So once I try the battery tomorrow now that its in working state again, i will update the results of the testing.

Thanks for all the assistance, I really appreciate it!

[mcplslg123]

Btw, just curious to know how you reset the battery from permanently locked status?

[Stevedb]

Me too

[Neddsme]

Btw, just curious to know how you reset the battery from permanently locked status?

Well to quickly summarize the process i followed these steps;

1: I opened the battery and had direct access to the cells. then i measured each cell pair coz it was a 2S2P battery pack and found that they were all discharged beyond 3V but one of the cells was lower than the rest (2.56V vs 2.70V). This imbalance was enough to ensure the battery would lock up.

2: I then charged up the cells with a custom balance charger ensuring that the cells were equalized and that afterwards the shady cell did not discharge beyond its 2 counterparts indicating a potential capacity degradation.

3: after verifying the cells were still healthy and not significantly imbalanced i then connected them to a raspberry pi. Since the RPi has I2C communication built into the board i was able to use it as a host for the SMBUS protocol on the battery.

4: I checked the BMS chip on the battery pack and found it was a BQ30Z55 which is used by a lot of "DJI" drone battery packs and luckily they have a firmware tool for their products. Link here

5: I took a gamble (Hoping and crossing my fingers that HP doesn't lock their batteries with custom proprietary keys) and followed this awesome tutorial that explores the tool and resets the "PF" flag in a battery pack using a RPi.

6: I just hopped for the best but made sure to take every precaution such as making sure i had no bad cells or damaged electronics on the battery pack.

And after following the tutorial, luckily the keys were default keys and i was able to reset the battery and get it working again.

[mon2]

Wicked! Thanks for sharing.

[Neddsme]

UPDATE

I was finally able to test the battery and its working as anticipated! At least that's good news.
The system powers up no problem with the battery.

However something strange is now happening. The charger when plugged in takes time to respond and show up on the system as charging and once it does its now making a hissing sound (The AC Adapter itself). Other than the hissing sound nothing seems particularly amiss. The battery is charging and working as normal just that the hissing sound is honestly unnerving for me.

It makes the sound whether the system is on or off but the only thing i noticed that is worth mentioning is that the system was rated for a 200Watt brick but the one I have is a 150Watt brick.. Interestingly, without the Battery, the Adapter is quite no complaints.

I am hoping it turns out to be the adapter is simply faulty but now i have a tricky task of finding a replacement which is not going to be easy at all.
Hopefully a new OEM 200Watt brick will change things.

😅