After hours of research on the Internet, I came across a solution for another Toshiba model which called for updating the BIOS. My BIOS was fairly old (1.4) and the newest version was 5.3 so I figured I had nothing to lose.
The BIOS flash came in two versions - CD-ROM DOS and Windows. I typically like to flash BIOS’s in DOS, so I created the DOS boot disk and started the flash with the original battery installed. The flash would not complete because the program detected that my battery was less than 20% charged - kind of ironic since that was the problem I was trying to solve! Undeterred, I decided to try to flash in Windows, hoping that it did not need to detect the battery level. Success - the BIOS was successfully flashed!
Once the flash process ended, I swapped in the second replacement battery and started up the laptop - it started and booted to Windows! Once booted, Windows said that the battery was 50% full and it was charging! I shut down the laptop and I am allowing the battery to charge overnight. Hopefully, it will be completely charged in the morning and it will run off battery power again.
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'''UPDATE''' - This morning the battery was charged to 100% and the orange light was changed to white. The laptop started up on battery power and is working fine. Problem solved!
After hours of research on the Internet, I came across a solution for another Toshiba model which called for updating the BIOS. My BIOS was fairly old (1.4) and the newest version was 5.3 so I figured I had nothing to lose.
The BIOS flash came in two versions - CD-ROM DOS and Windows. I typically like to flash BIOS’s in DOS, so I created the DOS boot disk and started the flash with the original battery installed. The flash would not complete because the program detected that my battery was less than 20% charged - kind of ironic since that was the problem I was trying to solve! Undeterred, I decided to try to flash in Windows, hoping that it did not need to detect the battery level. Success - the BIOS was successfully flashed!
Once the flash process ended, I swapped in the second replacement battery and started up the laptop - it started and booted to Windows! Once booted, Windows said that the battery was 50% full and it was charging! I shut down the laptop and I am allowing the battery to charge overnight. Hopefully, it will be completely charged in the morning and it will run off battery power again.