I would never recommend flashing a BIOS on a laptop with a low battery. However, it seems several of our older laptops may have batteries that are failing and with a BIOS fix for heat issues needed on our Dell Latitudes, we needed to flash the BIOS. The Dell BIOS update utility will not allow you to flash the BIOS until the battery is replaced or at a certain level.
Although the battery is installed, it has become unreliable. Dell’s BIOS upgrade would not update the BIOS.
Here’s the solution.
Download the BIOS to a folder on your C drive.
Open a command prompt as an administrator. Type the name of the flash utility followed by /forceit /forcetype.
In this case, updating to the A17 BIOS required me to type d630_A17.exe /forceit /forcetype
Close any programs you can on the taskbar.
Click continue and wait patiently as the BIOS is flashed. Do NOT disturb your power cord or power down your computer. It will reboot automatically.
