[ltp] T42p crashes after being on battery for few minutes

[Osho GG]

Hi Everyone,

I have observed a very weird problem on IBM Thinkpad T42p recently.
When I remove the power cord attached to the laptop, the laptop will
work fine for few minutes on battery and then all of a sudden would
just shut off. The battery is close to 100% charge and still the
laptop would immediately shut off completely. If I press the power
button at this time, then also the laptop will not power up. If I
connect power to the laptop, it will power up fine. Even if I  connect
power to the laptop for 1 second and then remove the power to the
laptop - the laptop would start fine with the battery.

Any ideas what could be going wrong? Sounds like some hardware issue
to me.. but I am not sure what do I need to do?

thanks,
Osho