Ultrabay battery - no status unless present on boot

[systemparadox]

Hi all.
I've just received an ultrabay 2000 battery for my Thinkpad T23.

It works well with Linux, except that I cannot get any status for it unless it was present at boot time. /proc/acpi/battery just has BAT0. If it was present on boot I get BAT0 and BAT1.

I tried compiling the battery module of ACPI as a module, and reloading it after inserting the second battery, but that doesn't work.

I cannot compile ACPI as a module.

How can I force the ACPI subsystem to redetect batteries?
Or how can I force the ACPI subsystem to detect the second battery at boot time even if it isn't present?

It is not practical at all to make sure the battery is present at every boot, so I really need to find a solution to this.

As an aside, does anyone know of any taskbar applets that show individual states for each battery?

Thanks in advance
Simon

[chubes]

Make sure you have the latest BIOS running on the T23.

Run a dmesg. Does ACPI look like it's running OK, not giving any funky messages?

What happens if you restart either acpi or apm using /etc/init.d scripts (assuming you're using a redhat variant). After you insert the second battery of course.