System model?  How old is the battery?

Dell Inspiron 1501.

Bought the computer in the spring of 2007, so the battery is about a year old.  

After doing some more digging it looks like i might need to update my BIOS. I went to dell's site to get the latest, downloaded and followed their instructions.

After downloading the .exe, when opening it i get an error message:

cannot load driver c:\users\myname\desktop\phlashnt.sys

Access is denied

error code: 5

Was there any resolution to your problem ??

My problem just started yesterday.....  but I have not updated the BIOS....

Response would be appreciated before I do anything else...

Thanx