[SOLVED] how to force lenovo bios update without battery

[ell]

Hi, in a pickle here. I have this lenovo that needs a bios udate (battery won't charge, tried 2 batteries and 2 chargers, uninstalled battery drivers, pulled cmos and battery, ssd, ran bios from commandline in usb with /forceit) no matter what I get the low battery warning message trying to flash, and it quits. Anybody have another other tricks I can try to bypass power check in the winflash??heres the link>
Lenovo 1580 bios

 

[nlinecomputers]

Somehow I doubt a bios would prevent it from charging. Its a bad motherboard.

 

[britechguy]

As an aside, I've never had a UEFI/BIOS update fail to apply even when no battery was present if the machine was connected to its power supply. If it's not allowing the update when you're connected to AC power, regardless of the presence or absence of the battery, I'm with @nlinecomputers as to root issue.

 

[ell]

Somehow I doubt a bios would prevent it from charging. Its a bad motherboard.

Yeah I suspected it but it passed my mobo tests so I'm not ready to throw in the towel, (its my personal machine dang)

 

[ell]

As an aside, I've never had a UEFI/BIOS update fail to apply even when no battery was present if the machine was connected to its power supply. If it's not allowing the update when you're connected to AC power, regardless of the presence or absence of the battery, I'm with @nlinecomputers as to root issue.

Agree, but I looked it up and this stupid bios update refuses if the battery is below 15%, even when plugged in.

 

[ell]

Agree, but I looked it up and this stupid bios update refuses if the battery is below 15%, even when plugged in. I've watched videos and read posts about workarounds but no luck yet. Lenovo just says to get a new battery, which I did, but it came discharged! (genuine Lenovo too) but the bios is old and I know they can sometimes cause charging issues.

 

[Porthos]

2 chargers

Are these genuine Lenovo chargers?

 

[ell]

Are these genuine Lenovo chargers?

yes they are, both work fine, how irritating.

"Lenovo requires a working battery, decent charge (at least half) and plugged into AC. This is to prevent possibly bricking the BIOS chip. There is not a facility within the Lenovo BIOS update application to update with no battery."

 

[Sky-Knight]

Replacement mobo time either way, there is no "forcing" a firmware update. It either works, or it doesn't. And in the case that it doesn't... Which happens often on laptops that want battery AND AC power...

Well... the only alternative I can think of is finding a way to charge the battery without the laptop. Or, you order a new mainboard with the BIOS update already applied.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Common sense, a BIOS problem wouldn’t cause a battery not to charge. If it did it would have died after the first discharge.

Take a volt meter and see if your getting power at the battery charge ports.

 

[ell]

Replacement mobo time either way, there is no "forcing" a firmware update. It either works, or it doesn't. And in the case that it doesn't... Which happens often on laptops that want battery AND AC power...

Well... the only alternative I can think of is finding a way to charge the battery without the laptop. Or, you order a new mainboard with the BIOS update already applied.

I've been playing with this thing all day and I think I fried it somehow cuz now I can't even get it to boot It's doing the typical motherboard failure gray screen no post. I'm going to say it was on its way out anyways to make myself feel better, I never got a bios flash even started It would not let me. Damn it now I have to dig up an old clunker to put the SSD in for my server for my Plex movies

 

[ell]

Common sense, a BIOS problem wouldn’t cause a battery not to charge. If it did it would have died after the first discharge.

Take a volt meter and see if your getting power at the battery charge ports.

I tested both chargers, they fine as I guessed. I put a multimeter prong on each end of the battery connector on the mobo and it registered 11 volts. bad?

 

[Diggs]

I tested both chargers, they fine as I guessed. I put a multimeter prong on each end of the battery connector on the mobo and it registered 11 volts. bad?

That should be right. Laptop batteries are 3 LiIo cells in series. 3 x 3.7v is 11.1v so you are right there.

 

[ell]

Weird wish I knew more about motherboards I'm more of a virus person, If anybody can educate me or send me a link I'd like to do some more testing to try and figure out what the problem is. Powers up with lights, grey screen then fades to black, power light stays on punching hotkeys does nothing,external screen same image

 

[ell]

LOL well I decided to power the thing up today. I tried a different stick of ram and that made the mobo scream, so at least I knew there were signs of life. I tried unplugging the video cable this time to the lcd and hooked up hdmi and the thing came back to life on the external.

Now I booted to my win pe with the new bios on it. I extracted the exe and inside there are a few files, open the winflash64.bat with notepad and removed cbp 30 and bcp as shown. Saved. Ran the install.exe and it flashed fine with just the a/c adapter. It didn't fix my battery issue, but now I have a lcd issue, could they be related?

 

[HCHTech]

Deck chairs something something Titanic.

 

[ell]

Deck chairs something something Titanic.

LOL, I know right! not a very busy week I'm afraid! I love little victories though, pretty much just turned into a learning project that I will end up throwing on a shelf when I get busy again.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Google reports all sorts of strange video related issues associated with that model... Even charging issues because of a bad video driver?!?

WTF did Lenovo do?

If it were me, I'd leave the thing plugged in somewhere if it works that way fine... but otherwise get rid of it. It's a problem child at best.

 

[ell]

Google reports all sorts of strange video related issues associated with that model... Even charging issues because of a bad video driver?!?

WTF did Lenovo do?

Its totally coming down to a video thing, now just have to find the right driver, its so weird, when the desktop first appears on boot the battery icon rolls back and forth like its charging, then once windows is fully loaded it stops at 0, says its plug in but not charging, no error or anything.

 

[ell]

Google reports all sorts of strange video related issues associated with that model... Even charging issues because of a bad video driver?!?

WTF did Lenovo do?

If it were me, I'd leave the thing plugged in somewhere if it works that way fine... but otherwise get rid of it. It's a problem child at best.

yeah I'd dump it but its a i7, light and speedy.