Charging a laptop battery without the laptop...

[deadeye]

Ok, I have a Dell Inspiron 1526 that is not willing to charge the battery.

In boot up the BIOS message says that the puter does not recognize the power adapter and it will not charge but is able to run on the a/c source. It is a common problem on these models and it appears that the fix is to update the BIOS. However, I am in a conundrum as the battery has to be at 10% to do this update. The battery of course is at 0% so that makes the fix a real treat.

How would I go about charging the battery to do this? Is there a cable that I could buy that would hook directly to the battery or is there some other way to make it charge that I am missing?

Thanks for any help. The computer works just fine without any other ill-effects so its one of those things that really irks me because otherwise it would be perfect . I just got the thing (thinking it was just a bad battery or charger) and was hoping to give my old one (early P4 thinkpad) to someone in the family but I need one with a working battery to tune my car.

[lakeshoremunster]

you could try to use a small power source and hook it up to your battery terminals it should be labled + and - i would leave it hooked up for a short time and then check it to make sure nothing is worng, also check it with a multi meter to see if it is holding a charge, it might just work. Or find someone with the same laptop and use theirs to charge yours.

[upnorth]

I would call Dell, if you hook that battery up wrong you may fry it and those things aren't cheap. Internal chargers do go bad.