Updating BIOS on Thinkpad T60 - no battery

[APLevine]

I have a Thinkpad T60 Type 2007. Unfortunately my battery no longer works. When I try and update the BIOS using the 'BIOS update utility' version 2.23 an error message appears telling me that I cannot proceed with the BIOS update as my battery is not fully charged (which I am obviously aware of). Is there a way of initiating the BIOS update without a fully charged battery?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

APL

[Agotthelf]

Hello,

unfortunately there is no normal way to update without a full charged battery.

[etabeta]

I have the same problems.

Is it really impossibile to update the bios without a battery ?

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

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etabeta wrote:

I have the same problems.

Is it really impossibile to update the bios without a battery ?

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As said, no.

[hardaway]

It should be possible, if we could have the source code of the program.

Maybe an old flasher for dos which does not have such check

Found a fix here

[jbabe3909]

For the t61 lenovo I renamed the $01af000.fl1  to bios.rom and I renamed the $01af000.fl2 to platform.bin.  Then use the winphlash tool that is apart of the bios update download from lenovo (it is in the folder you download).  I browsed to the bios.rom file and ran the update with out problems.  the system rebooted and came up normaly.  I had the same problem with a battery error and this got around it.

[ajkula66 Guru]

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hardaway wrote:

It should be possible, if we could have the source code of the program.

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While it most certainly is possible to flash BIOS with no battery installed, it is extremely unsafe to do so.

Interrupt a power supply and your ThinkPad becomes a doorstopper.

I'd buy a cheap used battery if I needed a BIOS flash that bad...beats swapping the planar any day of the week.

My $0.02 only...

[hardaway]

It worked!

[collinmanderson]

jbabe3909's method worked for me.

[TuuS]

Why would you risk destroying your systemboard, you can buy a used battery, or a generic very cheap. 

ps. If you insist on taking such risks, then I'd recommend plugging your adapter into a UPS power supply, it only takes a fraction of a second of interrupted power to destroy your board during a bios flash.