laptop - Battery reports it's fine, but notebook won't boot /wo AC plugged in
2014-07
all3fox
I am running Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M5-581TG. I opened it up to clean (as I've done twice before), assembled it back and now observe weird behaviour: the laptop won't react to the power button unless it's plugged in. If I plug the laptop in, power it on and then plug it out, the laptop will power off.
However, the battery says it's fine. Here are the diagnostics:
all3fox@tardis ~ % acpi -V
Battery 0: Full, 100%
Battery 0: design capacity 4391 mAh, last full capacity 3233 mAh = 73%
Adapter 0: on-line
all3fox@tardis ~ % upower --dump
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC0
native-path: AC0
power supply: yes
updated: Thu 19 Jun 2014 04:45:00 PM MSK (1283 seconds ago)
has history: no
has statistics: no
line-power
warning-level: none
online: yes
icon-name: 'ac-adapter-symbolic'
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
vendor: OEM
model: AP12A3i
power supply: yes
updated: Thu 19 Jun 2014 05:05:00 PM MSK (83 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: fully-charged
warning-level: none
energy: 40.502 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 40.502 Wh
energy-full-design: 55 Wh
energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 12.525 V
percentage: 100%
capacity: 73.64%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-full-charged-symbolic'
What might be the problem?
all3fox
Fantastic! Turns out, the battery has to be grounded to the chassis, otherwise it'll refuse to operate. It was precisely my case: I ruptured some foil which touched one of the chassis screws around the battery. I replaced the foil and now it works!
To be brutally honest, I did not come up with that myself, a similar thing is described here about a similar laptop model (though in the case of my model, the screws' position is different):
I have been working on this model laptop for a friend of mine and after working on it, it would not see the battery. Working on computers for a living, this bothered me. After trying all of the proposed fixes, nothing worked. Alas, I had given up and decided to button the laptop back up. This is when I found the solution. It turns out that the battery HAS TO BE GROUNDED to the case in order to operate. It does this through a case screw. The particular case screw it uses is about 1.5 inches above the power indicator LED. If you press in that general area with the laptop plugged in, you will see it start to charge. In order to solve this issue permanently, make sure that the screw in this mounting hole in in tight. This has frustrated me to no end, but I am happy to finally have a solution.
I might return here with a detailed blog post with photos because it's a very subtle matter!
Josh Kodroff
When I plug my laptop in to the original manufacturer's AC adapter, my laptop battery charges.
When I plug it into a cheap replacement (i.e. non-Dell) adapter, it stops using the battery, but will not charge.
Here's the details:
- The laptop is a Dell XPS M1530.
- I've verified that both the original and knockoff are specified for the same wattage (90 W AC), input (AC 100 - 240V, ~ 1.5 A, 50 - 60 HZ), and output (19.5 V, ~ 4.62 A).
- I am using Windows Vista.
I did get a message about some sort of power issue when booting on the knockoff adapter, but unfortunately I dismissed it ("don't show this again") before I realized the battery wasn't charging and don't know how to get it back.
Any ideas? Do I just write it off as a lesson in not buying non-manufacturer AC adapters?
caliban
3rd-party adapters might not have the same efficiency as the original charger, and their QC is usually much worse.
However, if you can use the notebook - I suspect the case is the former - the adapter is not supplying enough power (because of its non-efficiency) to power the notebook and charge the battery at the same time. It's one or the other.
Shutdown your notebook - see if the battery charges.
hanleyp
The Dell AC adapter contains a chip that identifies it as an approved AC adapter. If you try to use a third party AC adapter on a recent Dell adapter then since it doesn't have the special chip that identifies the AC adapter as being Dell approved then the laptop declines to charge from the AC adapter.
There are a couple third party AC adapters that contain the special chip that identifies the adapter as being Dell approved. The iGo.com adapters are one such third party AC adapter. They sell specialized “tips” that contain the necessary chip to provide the proper identification to the laptop.
gbarry
Try unplugging the Dell adapter from the the AC outlet and see if it acts like the knockoff. Actually measuring the output would be better than reading the label, but I know not everyone has a voltmeter.
MarkS
I have a Dell studio 1737, and out of nowhere, I get a popup message in Windows that tells me that I need to have a power supply that meets Dell's requirements.
Like others I can power the laptop and use it just fine with the adapter. The blue LED in the adapter end that plugs into the laptop is lit up. When I unplug it and plug it back in, that the LED on the laptop itself, which indicates that the battery is charging or charged, initially lights up but only for about a second. Then it goes off and the dialog box pops up.
Tried a lot of things. Restarting the computer. Unplugging the adapter from the wall. In the BIOS, it says it's unrecognized as well, so Dell is rejecting it's own adapter at a hardware level on the motherboard. If there is some kind of "chip" in the adapter that Dell looks for and rejects if not present, then apparently that chip has failed (Burned out? Static electricity got it?)
If this is the case, then it's a prickly move by Dell to add hardware for the sole purpose of requiring you to purchase only their product directly from them at an inflated price, and then to have that part of the device fail when it actually is a genuine Dell that I purchased from them.
Dell wants $66 for a replacement adapter. Just bought one on ebay for $8.18 on ebay.
Update: Plugging my adapter into a friends Dell laptop works fine. Plugging in his adapter in mine fails in the same way. Removed battery from my laptop and plugged in cable. Same problem.
So I've concluded that it's not the adapter. It's not the battery. It's the laptop itself that seems to be the problem. Thank you Dell for making a fussy motherboard that decides to stop recognizing a perfectly good, genuine Dell AC adapter.
DDRAMbo
Contacts become worn, bent and dirty over time. I would suggest trying to clean the power connector port with contact cleaner. Since it is female, there wouldn't be much you could do on the male side except bend it ever so slightly to force contact. I've heard (though not proven) that this can occur with laptop battery connectors also. IMO, connectors on computers in general are pretty flimsy.