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May 29th, 2009 02:00

BIOS upgrade without battery for a E1505

Is it possiable to do a bio update on a Inspiron E1505 WITHOUT the battery? Maybe boot from a floppy (yeah I got one still! USB though) and force flash it like some of the older laptops?

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May 29th, 2009 04:00

It's a very, very bad idea - if the flash fails due to a power interruption, you'll be out the cost of a mainboard.

Replace the battery, charge it fully and THEN flash.

 

June 29th, 2009 19:00

 

It looks like the short answer is NO!  The Bios install program is written to require a "detectable battery" (detectable by the older bios) even if it is the older BIOS that is itself bugged and cannot recognize a fully specificationally functional battery. 

LOL, are these programmers smart or what?

57 Posts

June 30th, 2009 10:00

I wanted to update my Latitude D820 bios when I got an error saying that the battery must be at 10%.  I find this a strange requirement.  What about updating BIOS for desktops?  Does it require a battery backup do update the BIOS?

 

July 1st, 2009 11:00

Pretty soon, Dell will make it say battery must be at 20%, then 30%, then . . .

LOL, don't give Dell any ideas about adding battery backups to Desktops. 

Which brings me to ejn63's reply: "It's a very, very bad idea - if the flash fails due to a power interruption, you'll be out the cost of a mainboard."  My question to him and del is: So how may desktop mainboards have been fried during bios installs?

 

1 Message

November 13th, 2009 21:00

 You don't fry the board from a bad flash but you may end up having to buy and replace the EEPROM chip which is or should be extractable and replaceable for a lot less than a new board; usually around $30. Most companies will flash the BIOS to the new chip for you before shipping if you send them the flash file. The truth is it's a bad idea to need a battery installed in a laptop to get your work done. Lenova is losing business by the droves because they engineered this in their requirements. This is just Dell trying to cover their A's from bad flashes but anyone that has read on the subject knows that flashing a BIOS is a risk and sometimes they go bad regardless of the power supply.A BIOS is just like any other software, it's subject to corruption. Unfortunately you don't know it's corrupted until you reboot and realize the computer is dead but the motherboard isn't bad it's just a chip that contains corrupted software. The problem is that you can't fix it because it's the software that starts everything and the computer is dead in the water without that software working. As far as I know there is no way to clear a chip from a bad flash but you can buy new ones.

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November 14th, 2009 04:00

The BIOS chip is soldered to the system board - it will cost a lot more than $30 to have it replaced.

If Lenovo (note your incorrect spelling) is losing business, then why has it reported a profit once again?

The BIOS is firmware, not software. 

The only correct information above is that there's no way for an end user to recover a bad flash.

 

2 Posts

April 30th, 2010 23:00

Hi, i think this post may be out of time but i hope you find this usefull.

 

The answer is YES i already done with a Dell 6400 (Latinoamerican version of E1505).

 

There are few simple steps to do the upgrade with a USB Pen drive.

 

1. Download unetbootlin for operating system.

2. Once download choose from the Distro menu FreeDOS and create the disk (please be sure to format the USB in FAT32 before create the disk)

3. Download and copy the bios upgrade program to the memory ( The MMXXXX.exe) file.

4. Boot from USB and choose the option 2 from FreeDOS called Safe Mode

5. Now your under a DOS envieroment, move to c: by typing c: (intro)

6. Now just type the name of the program you want to run like c:>MMXXXX.exe /forceit (intro)

7.Follow instructios( type y) and finally it will reboot the system, and... you upgraded the bios.

 

If you found any problem, ask me.

2 Posts

April 30th, 2010 23:00

This posts show the way to get ride with this problem.

1 Message

August 11th, 2010 02:00

I had to get a new bios chip put in today. Cost $95.

February 7th, 2011 13:00

You don't fry the board from a bad flash but you may end up having to buy and replace the EEPROM chip which is or should be extractable and replaceable for a lot less than a new board; usually around $30. Most companies will flash the BIOS to the new chip for you before shipping if you send them the flash file. The truth is it's a bad idea to need a battery installed in a laptop to get your work done. Lenova is losing business by the droves because they engineered this in their requirements. This is just Dell trying to cover their A's from bad flashes but anyone that has read on the subject knows that flashing a BIOS is a risk and sometimes they go bad regardless of the power supply.A BIOS is just like any other software, it's subject to corruption. Unfortunately you don't know it's corrupted until you reboot and realize the computer is dead but the motherboard isn't bad it's just a chip that contains corrupted software. The problem is that you can't fix it because it's the software that starts everything and the computer is dead in the water without that software working. As far as I know there is no way to clear a chip from a bad flash but you can buy new ones.


It is exactly what I need, Nice writing, I understand this part, Thanks for your analysis!

8 Posts

November 1st, 2011 17:00

After fooling with other methods I tried the one from neoecos.

neoecos' solution worked perfectly.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

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