Re: The battery cannot be identified.

[Ognjen Bezanov <Ognjen@mailshack.com>]

Sounds like the both the BIOS backup and main battery has died. Every
time the laptop is unplugged the bios will reset, including the time.

In these situations, when it next boots up it will prompt you to update
the clock. That is what it means when it says "please run SETUP program".

Once set up and booting, it should not pester you to do this unless you
unplug the PC again. I have a few laptops kicking around that do this,
but as I keep them always plugged in (as servers) it doesn't bother me.
(In fact I have an old PIII Inspiron 8000 with this issue, running as
download box)

If you want to, you could always replace the battery with a new one.
Really depends on whether it's worth it for you. Which battery you
replace is dependent on whether you want to use it as a laptop, or not.

O.


On 04/01/11 16:38, Peter Rapisarda wrote:
> Hello all,
>  
> I am a student who is just learning LINUX for the first time so I
> basically have NO idea what I'm doing so please be patient with me.  In
> an attempted to complement my studying I decided to resurrect an old
> laptop which is a Dell Inspiron 2200 with a Intel Celeron M processor. 
> The hard drive had gone bad so I replaced it and purched a verison of
> debian off of OSDisc.com and used that to install debian on my "new"
> system.  Everything works great except when I start up the computer i
> get a message that says:
>  
> Time-of-day not set - please run SETUP program
> WARNING: The battery cannot be identified.
> This system will be unable to charge this battery...
>  
> Is this a problem with the battery itself, or did I install something
> incorrectly maybe?  If I leave the laptop plugged in it works like a
> charm, but the second I take the plug out of the wall (even with the
> battery inserted into the laptop) it shuts off.  As you can imagine this
> is extremely annooying and I have no idea what to do.  I don't want to
> go out and purchase a new battery until I'm sure that's the issue.  Any
> help would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Thanks,
> -Pete