Thinkpads Forum

I have a dead battery and need to update my thinkpad 600E bios without battery to install Win2000.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks.

Go to www.thinkpads.com and look up "updating BIOS without a fully charged battery". Don't know if this works with a dead battery.

Call me thick, but I can't find it!! Any chance of a link, or repro of the procedure??

Doesn't work with 600x.... get a reference diskette is damaged message.

http://thinkpads.com/batteryless.htm

This method is for old version of BIOS upgrade disk. How can I upgrade this new version?

I spent countless hours once trying to find the solution to this issue and never found one. I wish someone would figure it out.

I have been in technology since before the birth of the PC and remember the feeling I had after discovering IBM's "config disk" - remember those ? Pick any other brand of PC back then. Want to upgrade it ? Simple, crack the hood, plug in the board, load up the drivers and with a little luck, you're done.
This process on an IBM PC ? after the birth of say the PS/2's ?? my God, I wanted break the leg off the engineer(s) responsible for this "method" and beat them with it.

Now, many years later the same talent that brought you "config disks", creates sinister BIOS update routines which require not only the presence of a battery, but it must be a perfect one at that and 100% charged.
HELLO ! Thanks, but I'm perfectly comfortable using a brick and taking the risk to make sure power is not interrupted while flashing the system - just like every other manufacture warns thereby placing the risk with the user. IBM wants to protect :

a) ME ?
b) THEM ?

What a way to build customer loyalty. If it were my choice, there would never be another piece of IBM hardware in my entire oragnization.

With all the talent out there, has anyone figured out a way to either "fake out" the laptop into thinking a perfect battery is installed or is the real answer simply eliminating this protion of the routine from the flash utility (which would seem to make more sense) ?

If you have a solution, please post it ; a solid fix is needed. If you've got one, and are in the NY, NY area - the beers are on me. Been through all the other stuff listed listed on the other posts, none work and the latest utlility as we've all seen, needs a good hack.

The machines are decent and there's value to still be had using them but if IBM thinks this is the way to do things, I won't rest until their name is erased from history.

There is no requirement for a Thinkpad battery to be "as new" and "perfect" in order to flash the BIOS.

The battery simply has to be able to retain some charge, even if only 5 minutes worth, and be able to report that it's fully charged when polled.

Regards,

James

The is most certainly an issue with a "less than perfect" battery.
Start here :

http://www.levien.com/tp600-battery.html

Then do a boolean search using Altavista and include

+IBM +laptop +BIOS +update +battery

Then, look at the numerous posts in this forum alone about people having trouble with BIOS flashing; many experiencing the battery warning message during an attempted flash. The battery I have is old, still holds a charge - albeit for not very long and even though the last time I had W2K running on the system in question, and the power mgt indication was at "100%" , the BIOS flash utility will not cooperate.

Whether or not it's the battery itself (cells) or the logic packaged within, as far at the user goes, it's "the battery".

Has anyone discovered a way to update a 770ED with no battery? I need the most recent BIOS in install XP but I cannot install it...

Any ideas?

Is it possible?