Dell Latitude C610 Downgrade BIOS

[Enrie Membership]

I recently upgraded my Dell Latitude C610 to the latest BIOS (A16)

Now the battery will not charge over 53% where before upgrading it would
fully charge.

I want to downgrade to BIOS A09 but when I try to use the hard drive
install method (I do NOT have a floppy drive in this laptop) I'm told a
higher version is installed and the installation is halted.

I do have a DOS boot CD so I can get to a command line but Dell don't
seem to supply a regular BIOS flash tool or a plain .bin BIOS file.

Does anyone know where I can obtain a A09 bin file for a Latitude C610
laptop and a DOS BIOS flashing application?

[mike]

Post by Enrie Membership
I recently upgraded my Dell Latitude C610 to the latest BIOS (A16)
Now the battery will not charge over 53% where before upgrading it would
fully charge.
I want to downgrade to BIOS A09 but when I try to use the hard drive
install method (I do NOT have a floppy drive in this laptop) I'm told a
higher version is installed and the installation is halted.
I do have a DOS boot CD so I can get to a command line but Dell don't
seem to supply a regular BIOS flash tool or a plain .bin BIOS file.
Does anyone know where I can obtain a A09 bin file for a Latitude C610
laptop and a DOS BIOS flashing application?

Maybe you don't have a problem.
How long did the computer run from full charge to shutdown before
and after the bios upgrade?
That's the number that matters.

I don't know that specific computer, but I can give you some general info.
Battery Gauge implementation varies from vendor to vendor depending
on which chips the batteries have and what the vendor does with the info.

Here's a possibility using very round numbers.
Say your new laptop would run for one hour on battery.
Over time, the battery wears out and that run number gets smaller.
Let's say, the run time is now half an hour because the battery capacity
has dropped to half.

One possibility is to have the battery charge indicator start at 100%
and run down twice as fast till it shuts off at zero.
Another is to keep the same indicator constant and have the computer
abruptly shut off
at the 50% mark. Annoying as it sounds some do that.
A third is to tell the customer that the maximum charge that the battery
can currently hold is 50% of the original design capacity when fully
charged and start running
down from there to zero.

I'd prefer the third possibility. It's possible that the new BIOS
implements
something like that.
That's why measuring the run time is important.

Download PC Wizard
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html
My version is older than this, but it likely works the same.
Click on the power icon then battery.
It will tell you the design capacity of the battery and
the current capacity of the battery.
I'll bet those two numbers ratio somewhere near your 53%.

As always, the Dell forums are the place to ask this kind of question.

[Pen]

Post by Enrie Membership
I recently upgraded my Dell Latitude C610 to the latest BIOS
(A16)
Now the battery will not charge over 53% where before
upgrading it would fully charge.
I want to downgrade to BIOS A09 but when I try to use the
hard drive install method (I do NOT have a floppy drive in
this laptop) I'm told a higher version is installed and the
installation is halted.
I do have a DOS boot CD so I can get to a command line but
Dell don't seem to supply a regular BIOS flash tool or a
plain .bin BIOS file.
Does anyone know where I can obtain a A09 bin file for a
Latitude C610 laptop and a DOS BIOS flashing application?

Dell has a DOS executable file at this url;
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/latitude-c610?driverId=R46290&fileId=2731126062

It's the next to last BIOS file. Just put it on your DOS
bootable CD.

[Enrie Membership]

Post by Pen
Dell has a DOS executable file at this url;
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriverDetails/Product/latitude-c610?driverId=R46290&fileId=2731126062
It's the next to last BIOS file. Just put it on your DOS
bootable CD.

Thanks, I copied the above file to the root of C: and then booted with
the DOS boot CD and ran the file from the command line and it worked.