Old XPS M170, 130W AC adapter bad, battery blinking. Can I get it to skip the adapter warning?

A client just gave me an M170 that works perfectly, with exception of the power side of it.

Original battey, it blinks a warning light at me, but works (although a max 22000mah out of the 79000mah it was designed for).

The AC adapter, however has gone bad. Rather than buying a new one, they just replaced it with an employee that left's few month old E6520.

So, I've been tasked with pulling data, then getting rid of it.


It works when plugged into a 90W AC adapter, but it won't boot with it. If I pull the AC adapter and boot off battery, it works fine plugged in as soon as it gets to the OS loading screen.

I realize the smart thing to do would be to buy a new AC adapter, as the specs are pretty good for a new craptop (PM 2.26ghz, 2GB RAM, 17" WUXGA, 7800GTX, 2915ABG), but before I look at that option, is there a way to get it to bypass the adapter check, possibly with a new hacked BIOS?

I'd have no qualms with downgrading to the 9300 BIOS if it would still be compatible with everything hardware wise (I couldn't care less about the LEDs).

 

You cannot bypass it. Go buy a new adapter. Genuine 130s are like $18 on eBay.

 

Well, after further diagnostics, I found the 100GB drive has disk errors at the end of it.


I guess I'll just live with the AC adapter issue, and just unplug it on bootup, as I'm certainly not willing to buy an AC adapter AND an old PATA drive.