Hackintosh battery woes... can anytone help?

[BFG]

Hi all, hope someone's either seen this before or experienced it...

Basically I bought a Dell Mini 10v from one of the DF members on here which had a tri-boot (Linux, Win, OS X). I've since flattened it and made it a pure Hackintosh with OS X, but I've hit a problem...

I left it in Hibernation and forgot all about it, and the battery's drained itself completely. The only way I can power it up and use it is to run it from mains with the battery disconnected. If I try to power it up from battery power, the white power LED cycles its colours like a disco and tells me that it cannot identify the battery!

"WARNING: The battery cannot be identified. This system will be unable to charge it's battery. Strike F1 to continue".

I've read on other forums that it's because the BIOS is above A04 (currently A06) so I've followed instruction up to a point where I've made a bootable dos USB key but the A04 BIOS downgrade needs to run in Windows.

I'm hoping I don't have to flatten it, install a Windows OS to run the exe, then reinstall OS X!! Is there any way round this? I know my chances are slim, but there's some clever people out there.

My thought was (correct me if I'm wrong) - download a Windows thumbstick image then run the exe that way - will this work do you think?

[Possy_99]

erm, followed instructions and made dos bootable key? doesn't make sense m8.. if the app runs under windows then no need for dos boot..

..do you trust where those instructions are from? if something goes wrong bye bye netbook..

dell and apple.. not the first names that would spring to mind when planning to do something which their equipment was never designed to do

anyways, sorry I can't be much more help - just thought I'd give you a heads up on the seemingly illogical instructions.. I've seen a few dell laptops moan about batteries.. wouldn't go to the extreme of flashing the bios though.. in my experience it's usually right and there's a compatible battery installed..

..it's one of dell's quirks.. which is why dell wouldn't be top of my list for 'experimenting' with..

[Over Carl]

Sorry I can't say I know anything about this specific issue but I have a couple of thoughts:

What happens if the laptop is powered down and charger plugged in - I thought dells should charge then.

Also rather than flattening it and starting again, you could image your osx setup, install windows to downgrade the bios then restore your image - if this sounds interesting but you need help just let us know.

[BFG]

In the end I ordered a replacement battery - it's a 6-cell one (large type, not flush with the base), installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it and gave it to my son. It's pretty much redundant now since I got the iPad, so I'm using it as a media extender to he can watch his cartoons and movies from my server. He's over the moon! (he's only 5 so thinks he's the business with a laptop LOL).

Thanks for the input guys.