Updating the firmware, cardbus support, Thinkpad 240

[matts]

I recently installed Windows XP on a Thinkpad 240 that doesn't have a battery. I'm running on AC power only, which is fine for my purposes. I need to use a cardbus card in the laptop, but the current firmware doesn't seem to support cardbus. So I tried updating the firmware, but I can't get past the step that requires me to have a fully charged battery! Is there any way to bypass this requirement? Can anyone offer any advice? Thanks!

matts

[glgermain]

Cardbus works fine on my 240, so it is likely a bios issue. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for installing the bios updates without a battery. I had a similar problem in updating the firmware on a DVD drive on a different computer - it required a boot floppy drive, which I didn't have. Had to borrow one. I don't know why they do that (I guess they are worried that the power might go out while you are updating the bios, resulting in a dead computer), but there should be a work-around.