Re: Could I solve my Dell battery problems by switching to Linux?

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:59:20 +0000, Rahul propped his eyelids open with
toothpicks and wrote:

I have a Dell Inspirion whose battery died on me. I bought a OEM
replacement but now my Laptop refuses to recognize it. Says
"incompatible battery" I tried solving this problem from my existing Win
XP OS but no luck.

I had this idea that if I installed Linux on it I might have a better
chance troubleshooting this or even fixing it? Win XP is so inane that I
don't even know at what level (BIOS / OS / App) these battery checks
happen.

Any suggestions? Have people had similar problems on Laptops running a
Linux OS? If Dell is playing its sneaky tactics via the BIOS I guess
even Linux cannot help. But is these are OS level issues maybe I'm in
luck? My Laptop is out of its warranty anyways, so I don't have to care
about Dell voiding anything...

Have you tried asking this in a Windows ng? I doubt you are the only one
to have this problem.

Be that as it may, it's been a while since I've looked at a Dell laptop or
pc, but IIRC Dell install a set of utilities, Dell Tools or some-such.
Some tool in there may be monitoring hardware, but that's a stab in the
dark. If you can boot into XP while plugged into the mains and un-install
those tools, you may have better luck.

If you can't boot up, use something like Knoppix live cd, or UBCD (http://
www.ultimatebootcd.com/), then mount the XP partition and try deleting
those tools. Could be dangerous, but if you have backups and you aren't
worried about blowing your XP installation, it could be worth a try. If
worse comes to worst, with a live cd you should be able to extract and
save any files you don't have backed up.

Oddly enough, I re-installed XP onto my brother's desktop yesterday, and
partway through the installation process a warning popped up about having
an unknown battery, with choices to quit or continue anyway. The reason
why that popped up on a desktop escapes me, but as you said, XP is inane,
to put it mildly.

--
Rob - Linux user number 467898 Ubuntu User number 17166
Linux 2.6.22-14-generic - E2160 1.8Ghz running at 3.0Ghz
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665.9238429876 - Number of the Pentium Beast
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.

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