Updated my bios, but now my battery is not detected - HELP

[Cabana]

Hello all,

I recently updated the BIOS for my T22 by downloading from the IBM website. However, after the computer restarted my power management will not detect my battery. Consequently, the battery led constantly flashes orange and the power manager software states that the remaining power of the battery is "unknown".

I tried to change my BIOS to an older version, but during the update I am told that the system power management is disabled and that the update cannot continue.

Can anyone help?

[ashleys]

If you're not on the latest Power Management drivers I would recommend installing those.

Use the link below and firstly ensure you've got the latest ThinkPad software installer. Then, upgrade both the Power Mangement drivers.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4JSQHB

[Quicksilver]

Can anyone help?

Same behaviour on my T20. I just powered down, removed the battery, waited for some seconds and reinstalled the battery -> no flashing orange light, just the green one

Unfortunately, afterwards the strange effects (various similar experiences posted to this forum, but with different T-models) while in hibernation began: Sometimes the battery level drops to 95% over night...

Maybe a new BIOS will be released for the T2x series, too.

Best,

Heiko

[Comman]

AM having same problem with my T23. I have determined that the problem is with a non-IBM brand primary battery. Problem started when I upgraded the embedded controller.

Does anyone have a reliable procedure for batteryless bios/embedded controller upgrade for the T23? I need to roll back to previous embedded controller version or buy a new IBM battery

[dd]

FYI

Bios Updated to latest today . . . 3.12

Everything is working fine

[romeu]

It happened to me too. After upgrading the BIOS in my T23 to version 1.18 and the Embedded Controller to version 1.06a the computer did not recognize my non-IBM battery. I suppose it’s a dirty trick of Big Blue to force us to buy original batteries, that cost four times the price of the battery I bought from Hong-Kong through Ebay.

DON’T UPGRADE THE BIOS IF YOU HAVE A NON-IBM BRAND BATTERY. Although, if you are reading this page, I assume that you have already done it.

The solution is to buy an original IBM battery or to downgrade the Bios back to version 1.17 and the Embedded Controller to version 1.05. This is easy to say, but the flash program demands a fully charged battery.

If you can borrow a fully charged original IBM battery for five minutes, it’s easy. Just don’t forget to remove any PC-cards, because some can cause the computer to hang during the flashing and that would be disastrous.

If you can’t but can boot from a diskette, there is a procedure: download the diskette versions of the BIOS and of the Embedded Controller and run them to create the diskettes. With a computer running Windows 98 make a bootable diskette without CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT and copy into it the files $017E000.FL1, PHLASH16.EXE, $017E000.FL2 and QKFLASH.EXE from the other two diskettes. Rename $017E000.FL1 to BIOS.WPH, boot with this diskette and run PHLASH16.EXE to flash the BIOS. Boot from the diskette again and run QKFLASH.EXE to flash the Embedded Controller. Voilà.

If you can neither borrow a battery nor boot from a diskette, you are in the same situation as I was: deep [censored].
I managed though to get there. It’s a long and winding road and not completely free of risk. I hope you haven’t forgotten everything about DOS, because you are going to need it.
With a computer running Windows 98, I made the diskettes, renamed $017E000.FL1 to BIOS.WPH, and burned all the files in a bootable CD-R. Just in case, I put there the whole Windows\Command folder too. Now it would be too easy to boot from the CD and run the flash programs, but you can’t flash if you install the DOS drivers for the CDROM. If you don’t, you can’t access the CDROM… Life is a [censored].

Actually, the problem seems to be HIMEM.SYS and not exactly CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT but I went for safety. I tried to boot from an USB device, but it didn’t work, so I replaced the hard drive in the Thinkpad with an old one, booted from the CD, formatted the hard drive with system files, ran FDISK to make sure that the partition was active, copied the necessary files into it and now I could boot from the hard drive and flash the BIOS and the Embedded Controller. It worked allright.

I don’t know if it is easier to solve the problem in Linux. Does anybody know that?

[pierlo]

is this procedure going to work with the t20???