Yesterday was quite the day!

[peteorrall@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

Yesterday was quite the day! My replacement #Dell battery arrived. Opened the #laptop, swapped the battery, powered it on. It booted up but failed to recognize my SSD and thus I couldn't boot into the OS. Strange.

#BIOS showed there wasn't a battery connected. Also strange. As per Dell's documentation, I needed to completely clear the power. Did that.

Still no disk recognized. BIOS still showed I can only boot from the NIC. Great. I found the BIOS version was severely out of date by 5-6 years. Downloaded the new firmware and flashed it successfully. The laptop *still* doesn't recognize the SSD....but does recognize I have a new battery. I guess that's an improvement.

Interestingly, while using the BIOS flash tool, the laptop can see part of the SSD as I was able to see part of Debian's /boot partition.

Never in my life did I ever expect replacing a laptop battery would cause me this much pain.

Dell Latitude 5400.

How do I get the BIOS to recognize my SSD?

#help #troubleshooting

[peteorrall@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@liam While there is the option to add a boot menu option, I am unable to see the SSD at all.

[peteorrall@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@liam Some progress has been made. After reseating the SSD, the BIOS now sees the SSD. I was able to add it to the boot menu and I'm now able to boot into the OS.

But...issues persist. The BIOS reports there is no battery and simultaneously Debian reports the battery is fully charged. The laptop shuts off immediately if I pull the power. After reseating the battery cable, the BIOS now recognizes the new battery, reports it as 100% charged as does Debian. Except....the laptop shuts off immediately if unplug the AC adapter.

So....a problem lies elsewhere. The laptop is unable to switch from AC to battery power despite being fully charged. The laptop is now displaying an LED blink code. Currently digging thru Dell's service manuals for this.