Thinkpads Forum

Hi. My battery doesn't work and its new, so i'm going to update my bios. But to do that i need to full battery otherwise it wont let me update it. How can i upgrade my BIOS without a battery? Please help! Thanks.

390E77.

very tough to even TRY to do this..

but before anyone can make even a passing suggestion, we need to know which thinkpad model that you have..

and

the easiest way to do this is to get a charged battery..

also, please post in the correct confrence..
and no multi posts, please..

its a 390E. Its the second battery i buy and doesn-t work. could you help me found out why it doesn-t work? when i slide it in the charging led lights up, the orange one, but after a couple seconds the light turns off again. The last thing i can try is updating my bios, but i need a fully charged battery for that which is quite ironic. Please help me.

and sorry about the multi post - i wont do it again, its just that i needed help fast

...

Ok, i shall explain everything.
I got the thinkpad 390E off my dad. The battery he gave me with it appears to hold no charge because when i slide it in the orange led comes up, then a couple seconds later it goes green. So i figured it could not hold a charge anymore.

So i bought one off ebay and got it. When i slide that one in, it appears to be charging for a couple of seconds and then the led turns off. But the computer still tells me the battery is charging (on windows) and stays at 2-3%. So i sent the battery back to the ebay seller and he sent me another one.

Same thing happened again, which annoyed me a lot. So i figured that there was a problem with my computer/OS/BIOS. i got windows 2000 and it works perfectly. The bios is very old so i thought that could be the problem. But could it be the battery board of the actual laptop? Please help me!

I have updated several different bios without a battery in them at all, but this was on later models. A warning message doesn't prevent you from proceeding, but if you choose to, do so at your own risk.

yeah, but on mine it wont let me proceed unfortunately. all i can do is restart the laptop. Thanks tho.
Any ideas as to why my battery doesn't work properly? battery board?

Sounds like the charging circuits on your system board have gone bad I think it is very unlikely that you got many bum batteries. Is there any way you could test your new battery on another 390?

...

oh ok. thanks guys. So how do i fix the charging circuits then? is it the same as the battery board?
Cause if it is it is cheap to replace it --->

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %3AIT&rd=1

Thanks for the help

oh wait - - is it the actual motherboard i have to replace???????

does anyone know?

well i ordered a new battery board and hopefully that should fix the problem. thanks for your help guys.