M15x - Battery just won't charge/"plugged in not charging"

Everything's been great with my m15x but yesterday I noticed that my battery was on 8% and I decided to charge it and like 30 minutes later I noticed that it was still on 8%. When I move the mouse over the battery icon on the taskbar it reads "8% available (plugged in, not charging)" How can I charge my battery??? Is it a problem with the battery? or my laptop?

 

1. Shut down the laptop
2. Unplug the AC power lead from the back
3. Remove the battery
4. Hold Power On button (Alienhead) down for 10 seconds
5. Put battery & power lead back
6. Restart

This fixed same problem for my son in his M17x.
I think this is referred to as a "power drain"

 

if that don't work try this.

leave it plugged in and powered on, carefully remove the battery out, wait 10 sec then put back in.

 

i have the same problem. For me its the power adapter, it is faulty and the system does not recognize it, and so does not charge.
do you have any other dell adapters that fit.
you can check buy going in to the bios (setup) when the system starts press F2, i think its under power settings which tells you what kind of adapter is plugged in, if it says unknown it is either the port or adapter. you can try plugging in any other dell adapter and see if it gets recognized. you will know its a problem with power adapter.

 

Try FN key + F2 to switch to charging battery on and off .

 

please do as INAP says, I have had this issue and that is the fix for it.

 

I tried everything mentioned above and I still can't get the battery to charge....

 

do you have any other "DELL" adapter

 

yeah, I tried my friend's dell studio adapter but still won't work....

 

I suggest you call Dell then.

 

a studio adapter is not able to charge the M15x.
when you plug in that adapter when you go to the bios does the M15x recognize the adapter?

 

Moving to the M15x subforum. This is the first I have noticed of the M15x also showing this behavior. We see this on the M17xR1 and R2 - two threads on this in the 17x subforum.

Has this been happening often with the M15x? If so, we need to get one of the AW reps in this thread.

madoon and the939672: What BIOS are you seeing this with?

 

i am running A07 (latest) im not sure if it ever occurred before the upgrade. what does the M17x do?

i am kind of sure that this is a power adapter issue(in my case at least), as it would work after a few attempt of tampering with the power adapter cable.
The system does recognize my 90w Dell adapter, it does not charge the battery however.

i need a backup as adapter as no alienware support in the country, i will ship my adapter back today.

Does anybody know if the dell 150w adapter works properly on the M15x?

 

Assuming you have OSD installed, FN + F2 has 3 different settings. Are you sure you have it on the right settings?

And yes the 150W adapter does work properly with the M15x as this is the adapter the M15x comes with.

If you were to use a adapter with a lower wattage you would get a warning as you turn on the computer saying you are using an adapter with a lower wattage.

 

I can not recommend the generic Dell 150W power adapter. It fried in the first gaming season. I use the alienware 240W adapter (the only alienware found on ebay) and it works fine. Make sure you turn off the adapter detection settings in the bios. It also seems to charge the battery, but no guarantees on that

 

I am have tried that 100 times. I am on the right settings, the adapter is not recognized.

I meant the older DELL adapters that were designed for the XPS line not the current adapter that ships with the system

Yes, i get these on every restart.

ill get a dell one, ill see how properly it works. i need one as back up.
You are still getting bios error messages on startup? i would have thought that as long as you have a more powerful adapter than the 150w it would not give you that warning?
Does the system recognize the adapter in the bios?

 

the behavior on the 17x platform is basically this:

System is connected to AC power using Dell/AW provided PSU

Intermittently, the system may not recognize the PSU as a supported adapter and a warning is displayed at the BIOS screen during power up.

The other instance of this is where there is no warning at time of power up and in Windows, hovering over the Battery icon in the system notification bar (next to clock), a message stating "Plugged in, not charging" may be displayed.

This started with the most recent BIOS updates and is an on-going issue.

If this is the behavior you are seeing, someone needs to PM one of the AW folks and have them review the thread. Keep in mind, the stock PSU which came with your system should be what you are using of course.

 

hmmm,
my system is new, thats why i thought that i had a defective adapter to begin with.
i think the bios update was released 2 days after i had the system, i updated immediately and the problem showed up, you could be right. But i didn't really use the system much the first few days to its hard to judge when the problem started.
Im sending the power adapter back today. and getting another off ebay.
i will wait till i get a replacement before confirming it.

 

Why pick one up from ebay if the system is new and under warranty? Have support dispatch a replacement. There is no reason for this not happening - the PSU is covered.

Battery warranty is 1 year only but the system is covered, including the PSU.

 

i am replacing mine under warranty, but i have to ship mine to the UK, as no alienware support in my country so i need at least one extra for emergencies.

 

Ahhh - understood. Figured it was something like that. My personal opinion on batts and psu's is to always go with the Dell brand. I have went the ebay route before on batts twice. One was a generic which turned out to be garbage and the other was a 'new' dell batt on ebay which was not 'new' when I received it. lol. lesson learned - at least for me. For PSUs and batts, straight from the dell site it is.

 

i tried a few psu with the M15x, a generic 150 and a M17x 240 psu, when benching i found none gave me the same performance as the stock psu did. even with the M17x 240 psu i would get constant lower bench scores.

 

I have BIOS A03...

 

Yea same here,

I didn't notice any difference between the 2 PSU's when running PCmark and 3Dmark

 

Ok, today I pluggled it in and finally started charging.... I just hope it stays like this.

 

I got the adapter i got of eBay today, its a dell PA-15 family

its a huge brick and i can forget ever carrying with me, as it is too big for mobility.
but it is working fine (no more bios errors) and charges the battery as well.

on the plus side it was 1/3 the price of the one dell lists for the M15x.

 

looks like this issue is getting looked at by dell. so hopefully no more battery issues.

" Re: M17X Battery not charging
Good news, well sort of... I was able to capture a system from a customer here on the NB Forums that replicated the issue 100% of the time. I had this rapid captured to our engineering team and they have been able to reproduce the issue with the system and a variety of batteries/AC adapters. This should equate to a solution for all affected systems (M15 and M17x/M17xR2). Once I have more details, I will provide them here...

We'll get these issues fixed, even if it is just one at a time... Thanks for all the help and information about this one...
__________________
Brian
Alienware Quality [M11x, M11xR2, M17xR2] "

 

you need a new bat tree

 

That's great news !
I bought mine in January 2010 and I have that issue more and more often. It is worst with every bios update.

I already contacted the Support three times (yes, 3 times) who told me to
- update my bios to the latest release (doh !)
- do the power drain stuff
- do the power drain stuff + a load bios default

The fact is, now the power drain (with bios to default value) is not enough. I have to unplug the AW completely for hours, with the battery removed to solve the issue. That's pretty annoying.

I am so tired of this that I just remove the battery and stay on the ac adapter all day long.

BTW, I also have a Latitude D620 which is charging perfectly with its power adapter or the M15x one. It doesn't want to boot when M15x adapter is plugged, but once "POSTed" I can plug anything and it will operate fine. The D620 seems less touchy than the M15x.

 

Just updated to A08 bios.

I'm still trying to charge my battery. I already drained power twice, clear bios settings, let everything unplug four about 30 minutes...

Plugged in, not charging...

Let's hope Dell will fix that issue soon.

 

have you tried this yet.

leave the laptop plugged in and powered on.

gently removed the battery, gave it a minute or so and slide it back in. hopefully it would solve the problem. just make sure you don't close the lid, if you have sleep mode or hibernate enabled for closing the lid.

 

Great, it does the trick !
Thanks.

 

So I just bought a new extended battery (NOT from Dell) for my m15x, and it won't charge no matter what I do. I can get the stock battery to charge just fine, but the new battery won't do anything. It runs fine, fits, etc. but it came in at only 7% battery and it won't go up...

Things I've tried:
the above mentioned trick by inap
the power drain trick
the battery swap trick that I made up myself
and just for kicks I re-flashed the A08 BIOS, which also did nothing.

I've most definitely learned my lesson with this computer about getting parts NOT from Dell, but I feel like this is kinda ridiculous. There has to be a way to get it to work, its a completely compatible battery. If anyone knows anything I'd really appreciate their input, even if its just a shot in the dark.

 

your the first to report using an aftermarket battery. the only other thing you can try is unplugging the cmos battery from the mobo. unplug it and do a power drain then put back.

good luck

 

try to return it. This is exactly why I have stayed away from non-dell batts and PSUs. Made a similar purchase with an old Dell E1705. Crap aftermarket batt - after that fiasco (ended up eating the cost of the aftermarket batt), I swore to never again go the cheapy route.

 

I'll try that and report back. Is there a driver that might affect the battery? I might try a clean install this weekend on an old hard drive and see how that turns out, but hopefully it won't come to that

Yeah I tried an aftermarket battery before and had issues, but nothing like this. I know a lot of people who have been fine with aftermarket batteries so I thought it was just a fluke.

Thanks guys, got tests tomorrow but I'll let you know results soon after those are done.

EDIT: After seeing how easy it was to pull the little battery, I went ahead and tried it, but it didn't help. I did notice something interesting though, which is that if I unplug the battery and put it back in, it immediately starts to charge for 1 second or less, then goes back to not charging. I'm not sure if its fair to draw any conclusions from this tiny little bit of info, but it seems to me like something in the laptop is "denying" the battery after recognizing it is non-Dell, or something to this effect. It seems like everything about the battery is fine and that it isn't defective in any way, but rather the computer is just flat out refusing to use the battery (which it will, of course, if I unplug it).

 

how do you know that the battery is charging for less than a second? the m15x doesnt have a battery charging light!
or do you mean that when you plug it in you see the meter near at the task bar move?

 

Not only does the meter on the taskbar move (and state that the battery is charging), but my alienhead starts to morph from light blue to dark blue. It abruptly changes back to solid light blue after a second or so (aka on AC power) and the taskbar icon says "plugged in, not charging"

 

Did the recent BIOS update fix this issue for the 15x folks? In the last post it could be a case of an aftermarket batt, but if others are still seeing it... we really need to have the resident AW rep take another look at this...

 

the new bios doesn't fix it. but the engineers were able to replicate the issue and is looking into it.

 

Good to hear - thanks for the update inap.

 

i m facing the same issue.
Thanks for the update inap.

Please keep updating us

 

For anyone who is interested, aftermarket batteries are NOT compatible with the m15x (and the other's I'm sure). I asked Brian about this and he said the BIOS will check the battery to see if its from Dell, and if it isn't it won't charge it, which is exactly what I experienced. At the very least, the battery I got was not engineered in a compatible manner, so make sure you get video or some kind of proof that the battery will charge before you even think about buying one.

On the bright side, I got all my money back for the battery I bought that doesn't work =)

 

My replacement charger arrived today.
it is functioning as it should, so in my case it was a broken adapter

 

was just about to say.... this is an adapter problem.. not your laptop bios or battery

had the same problem...i tried a bunch of different things... unplugging-replugging power cord, reboots, power drains, FN+F2 toggling on/off, battery swaps... you name it... and i would get mixed results... sometimes a reboot would fix it.. sometimes toggling FN+F2, sometimes a battery swap, sometimes a battery swap... it just wasn't consistent.. which didn't make sense...

Couple days later the blue ring light on the power cable would flicker on n off...eventually staying off more than on...

Then it got worse... as i would reboot.. a message would appear right at the POST/Bios screen saying my power adpater was not OEM and is not compatible...basically it blew for no reason.. haven't even been benching of gaming... just been running alot of office lollz..

so i called up dell and they sent me a new adapter.

sure enough, the problem went away immediately. Now my battery charges as it should without any problems.

but even if your blue ring stays on... it can still be defective...as my light went off a couple days after i first experienced the problem ...so just call up dell and get a new one

all adapters are sensitive and blow after a while... So again this is a problem with the power adapters... not your system/battery

Hope this helps

 

I encountered the same problem. This solution worked for me...

 

Any news about a bios fix to this issue?

It is a bit boring that every time I want to charge my battery, I have to do the complete process: remove battery, load bios default, power drain, plug power cord, boot windows, put the battery... And hope it works.

My $600 laptop is charging like a charm. My $2000+ AW doesn't.
(Yeah, AW in Europe are more expensive than in the USA)

 

No release date on the new bios. But dell is aware of the issue.

If this is happening so often for you, I suggest calling dell, maybe new adapter or mobo can help you.

 

well looks like the M17x got some kind of fix for this. hopefully they will release one for the M15x.

 

and the 17xR1 as well inap.

My guess is, if they have pinned it down for the 17xR2 we should see it soon enough. Just glad my 11x doesnt have this issue.