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Dell laptop not charging. What to work on first?

N

nedfunnell

Senior member
Howdy,
I bought a Dell M1530 laptop on ebay which was sold as with a bad battery- but when I got it, the issue turned out to be that it wasn't charging. The PO says that the battery stopped charging with the OEM Dell power supply, so she replaced it with an aftermarket one, which did not fix it. I've heard that this can be because of a proprietary Dell adapter which the laptop can recognize, but sometimes the chip burns out, and the aftermarket power supplies lack the genuine Dell chip.

I've replaced the battery (no dice) and I'm wondering what I ought to attack next- replacing the power adapter? It could be the motherboard, but I don't want to deal with that. I don't have any warranty left. Ideas?
 
boot into the bios go to the power setting or status. It should tell you if the AC adapter is not recognized. If it is recognized it should say 130w adapter.

If it is not recognized then it will probably not charge the battery.

dell compatible adapters are around 25$ in ebay.

If you are unlucky it might be the mother board reciever chip that is broken.

Good new is it should still work as a desktop plugged in. The battery life on these things is horrible anyway. You are lucky if you ghet 1 hour out of it (I have the XPS version).

peace
 
Yes, the adapter that came with the PC is not recognized as 'genuine'. However, I was just able to test with my friend's legit Dell adapter and it didn't recognize that either- so it's got to be either the subboard or the motherboard.
 
Update- apparently a lot of people get this issue after upgrading to the A12 BIOS version and some report that downgrading to A09 solves the problem. The issue is that the A09 updater won't let me install it- says it doesn't support this hardware. The PC was shipped on 3/13/09 and the release date of the A09 BIOS is 7/25/08, so it's very possible that installing the BIOS would brick the PC. I don't think I want to risk it.
Ideas?
 
Try this.

hello people. i have an xps m1530 as well with exactly the same problem. I ended up buying replacement battery and power adapter which did not resolve the problem. my system was stuck on bios A12 and 4% battery life.

just this morning, having been frustrated by dell's response (lack of response, actually) i went off to pcworld where the very nice chap told me the most common problem is built up static in the power system.

what he did was:

1. shutdown the system
2. take out the battery
3. plug the adapter in for like 2-5 seconds (why? i don't know) and take it out again
4. hold down the power up button on the laptop for between 20-30 seconds to clear out static
5. power on the laptop with ONLY the adapter plugged in (no battery)
6. shut it down again normally
7. replace the battery
8. power up again and then hold your breathe

he did this for me on the spot and i did not see the F1 message come up. however, when i got back home i did see the F1 message, but at least the battery was charging again.

he further explained that the build up and presence of static manifests when you press the power button, the LEDs light up, but the system does not power up. and i've seen that quite a bit on my laptop.

my battery is charging again and now i finally got rid of the F1 thingy now.
try it out now. it really resolved my issues.
Click to expand...
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...2-battery-problem-plugged-not-charging-4.html
 
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