Alienware 17 R2 Battery Charge Problem

I seem to be having a problem with my laptop charging. Earlier this week I was trying to figure out how to get sound blaster recon to work after upgrading to windows 10 caused it to stop working. While trying to fix that, I had Dell check my laptop, and it told me that I needed to update the BIOS. So hoping that could possibly fix the problem, I downloaded the latest BIOS on 9/14/2015.

Now once it finished installing, I got a message saying that the charger I had may not work or properly charge my laptop. Since then, I have noticed that it takes a lot longer to charge my laptop, and its slowly holding less and less power. When I plug it in, it will only say "__min until charged" at first, even though it takes way longer than the couple minutes it says. But then when it got to 90%, it said "90% available, plugged in, not charging", and now today "83% available, plugged in, not charging".

I have an 8 cell 92W hour battery, and my charger model is FA180PM111, with 100-240V input. Before I did this BIOS update, my laptop ran just fine. Do I need to go back to the previous BIOS, or is there something I can do?

 

Hey,

download On Screen Display from Dell
install or re-install it
reboot
then right clic on icon battery (task bar)
and you should change battery mode

ps 180W or 240W does not matter,
only OSD does the trick.

c:\Program Files (x86)\Alienware On-Screen Display\desktop.exe

 

I tried using On Screen Display, and it didn't change anything. I even re-installed it and rebooted like you said, but no changes. Doesn't matter if Desktop mode is enabled or disabled, it hits 85%, then stops charging.

 

"I got a message saying that the charger I had may not work or properly charge my laptop."

after A06 update and reboot, did you see:
AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined

and did you well keyin F3 (no more wattage message) before F1 or F2 ?

now, what's the status of
AC adapter type: in the BIOS ?

note:FA180PM111 is the 180W, which NVIDIA card ?
NVIDIA 980 needs 240W (like GA240PEI-00)

 

I do believe that was the message I saw, and I might have pressed F3, cause I haven't seen any messages pop up since.

After looking in the BIOS, I guess I only updated to AO5, since that's the version it says I have. But it says my AC adapter type is 180W, and my NVIDIA card is a 980.

 

Hey,

I had the following problem:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw15-r1-aw17-r2-bios-a06.781507/#post-10091193

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw15-r1-aw17-r2-bios-a06.781507/page-8#post-10093369

Update your Bios to A06 and

have a phone call with Dell-Alienware

Nvidia 980 does need 240W PSU

 

Haven't had much time to deal with this due to work, but finally got in touch with Dell-Alienware today. I tried asking for a 240W, but the person I talked to said they were out of them(which i found funny, cause dells website still has them up for order), and that my charger type wouldn't matter.

So he had me verify my BIOS, and then tried re-installing A06 Bios. Then went into BIOS settings, checked everything, and everything appeared fine. But my laptop still not charging properly. So he thinks my battery got corrupted by a bad BIOS update (maybe that A05 update, idk). So an onsite technician is going to be coming by to replace my battery.

I still think I'm going to need a 240W charger, but I guess I'll just wait til after this technician shows up and see how my laptop is then.

 

So the technician came by the other day, and he replaced my battery with a new one. Now while my laptop is charging to 100% again, its still taking a long time, and the battery still only lasting about an hour. When the technician was done, he even asked what the problem was, and I told him that support thought a BIOS update possibly corrupted my battery. He just had a weird look on his face and said "Huh...really?"

So now for sure I'm going to have to bug Alienware to give me a 240W charger since everything they tried failed.

 

Bump Dell-Alienware, if when gaming you AW slow down, throttling.