E6430 - Battery error?? - Battery #2 & #3: Not present

Hello,

I have brand new Dell Latitude E6430 which has probably been powered on a maximum of 15 hours since it has left the box. Just the other day, I thought it was really weird that I was unable to change the brightness using the "Fn+Up arrow" combo.

When this didn't work, I went down to the battery on the taskbar to manually adjust the brightness and that is when I saw this:



"Battery #2: Not present", "Battery #3: Not present", and the brightness setting information was NOT there earlier yesterday.

Here are some troubleshooting steps I have attempted:
Removed the battery
Cleaned motherboard and battery contacts
Updated the BIOS from A12 to A14
Restarted / Shutdown multiple times

I have the 97 Whr 9-cell extended battery. Which like I said, hasn't been used for any longer than 15 hours. Could I seriously already be having battery issues?

 

The battery information is 100% correct as shown.

Battery 1: The main 9 cell battery you have installed
Battery 2: The battery you swap with your CD Drive - Media Bay Battery Module
Battery 3: Battery slice that goes UNDER your entire laptop, like a sheet.

Make sure you do not have auto brightness adjustment on. I think that is Arrow Left key. Try that. If that doesn't work, you might want to reinstall Dell System Manager of some sort from dell.com/drivers that lets you control things like brightness, wifi on and off, etc.

 

Dellienware,

Thanks for the reply. I guess I must be crazy demanding that those listings were not there yesterday... I guess that's what happens when you work with computers all day.

Thank you for confirming my insanity!

 

It's amazing how much battery these new machines can take. I don't recommend the slices, but the 30w media bay battery does look appealing.

 

I do use one mediabay battery that I swap around to extend runtime of either my E6320 or the newer E6430. Often I use my laptop of the grid so the extra 3 cell does help a lot. A small cost for extra mobility I suppose.