m1530 "plugged in. not charging" solution.

Hello guys, i was having this wierd behavior of my laptop where battery woudnt charge above 6%, ive tried most of the "solutions" on the web, but none of them worked.

-Desinstalling Microsoft's ACPI-Compliant control method battery
-Doing a vista clean install
-Restarting/Removing/Plugging the battery from the laptop with the system running and shut down, and all sorts of combinations between.
-Trying different AC (from dell, some of my friends have got some dell systems, i tried a m1330 AC)
-Tried to find a battery calibrator, but was unsuccesful, and even tried to downgrade my BIOS, but couldnt because my battery wasnt charged above 10% (thats a requisite to flash the BIOS)

NONE OF THOSE WORKED.

So i called dell, they told me to go to the BIOS, tech guys told me that the problem could be figured out there by 2 ways, it'd either:

-Recognize the AC adapter (in due case, it was a battery problem)
-Or it wouldnt recognize it (in which case, it would be a MoBo or a AC adapter problem.

Turned out it recognized the AC adapter, so next step was to send me a new battery, since i had a 6 cell battery (which the dell guy confirmed after i gave him the serial number of the battery) i expected to receive a 6 cell battery replacement, but no, lucky me i received a 9 CELL BATTERY INSTEAD, free within warranty period (system is only 7 months old) so yeah, im happy, and my battery is charging again.

Everything is fine, so i thought i would share this info for you guys.

One thing to get in consideration: The embedded battery health indicator might not indicate that the battery is healthy, since my faulty battery had 5/5 green lights when i tried to check the health but was still faulty (my new one has 5/5 health lights and works wonderful)

Have a nice day.

 

Glad to hear you got it sorted!

Just one thing though...

When you say

If you press the battery health button it will show how much charge it has left (5/5 full, 1/5 verging on empty).

However if you hold the button, it will show the health of the battery (0/5 being in new condition, 5/5 being pretty much dead)

Are you sure you held the button down? not just pressed it?

Just something to remember

 

Yup, pretty much, as soon as i pressed it, it just showed 1 light (meaning it had very little charge) however, when left pressed, it showed 5 lights, i think u have the health lights backwards, as my new battery, when fully charged, shows 5 lights on both, charge and health (pressing and holding).

 

Ohhh nevermind, i just did the test, and yeah, when fully charged it shows 5/5 when pressed, and no lights at all when press and hold. Sorry
I take that back.

 

Hi,
I try to hold the button, it shows 3/5. What does it mean? Is the battery dead?
My battery won't charge when plugging in.

 

I'm having the same problem, swapped battery same problem, changed charger same problem.

When I go into bios settings, and go up and down on menu and then plug out and in the charger it starts to work - only to stop charging once I plug out and back in again.

My warranty is out - if I renew will they fix this for me?

Any help would be great!

 

When did your warranty expire? Sometimes, if it hasn't been that long, you can get them to replace.


Cin...

 

I just got it sorted, I reverted back to the A09 BIOS and so far it's charging away, it seems as if the A12 BIOS is causing the problem! I'm well chuffed as my warranty is out 7 months and they wanted 150 quid to extend it!

 

Hi Mfield,
I have the same problem with M1530.
Tried different adapter & battery etc... Nothing worked.
My warranty expired in Jan 09.

I'm now thinking of replacing the power jack (already ordered one) but as you're saying the downgrade of BIOS to A09 worked for you, it may also work for me. My current BIOS version is A12.

When you had the problem, was your power adapter recognized in BIOS or it was under "Unknown adapter"?
My adapter was not recognized in BIOS and that's why it wasn't charging the battery.
Although once every 100 times (when I plugged in and out the power adapter) it did recognized the adapter and then charged the battery.

Also, where did you download the A09 BIOS from?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Same problem, bios A12 doesn't charge the battery but A09 does....
You can find it at Dell's driver page clicking bios and then other versions, or here for A09 version.

 

Thanks, downgrading the BIOS from version A12 to A09 worked for me as well.
The battery is now charging everytime

What I have noticed though is the fact that the Adapter is still not recognized in the BIOS. I don't really care as long as everything is working but... it shoul be recognized as 90W Dell Adapter.

Thanks

 

Oh thats a good! Glad you got it all worked out.
I didn't have any prob's with the A9 Bios..
Would you extend your warranty if you felt you needed it?


Cin...

 

A09 doesn't work for me.Help, my warranty is out

 

I would try replacing the power jack. You can get them on ebay.
That requires some 'soldering' though and still can't be sure if it solves the problem...

 

I have 9 cell battery, its only 1 and half year old. Most of the time I run on AC power but the battery health shows 3 lights

 

I'm using the A12 bios and am experiencing this problem. I wanna try to downgrade to A09, but my battery is at 0% and I need to have a 10% charge to flash the bios. Any work arounds or suggestions?

 

My M1530 stopped charging a week after I bought it. Dell sent me a new power supply. -- This problem was intermittent and turned out to be a broken wire in the power supply.

My wife's M1530 stopped charging last Tuesday. We switched power supplies (and batteries, to satisfy the Dell Tech on the phone) with my mine, saw adapter not identified in the BIOS and determined it was internal (motherboard). Thursday a Dell tech replaced her motherboard and her power supply (for good measure, I guess). -- This problem was sudden.

When my power supply went bad, I bought a generic replacement at Best Buy to keep my machine running until the Dell unit arrived. That power supply would not charge my laptop either. I thought maybe my laptop was at fault, not the charger. After I got the Dell charger and it worked fine, I searched the web to find out what was the deal. It turns out the power supply sends a signal down the small center pin of the power supply. Dell says it is so the BIOS can identify the wattage of the power supply and charge the battery in the most efficient manner. Maybe ... but it's also a good way to take market away from other vendors. I was told by the vendor that Dell would sue them if they replicated the signal that identifies the power supply to the BIOS.

At the time, I looked for any way to get around the limit and get my aftermarket power supply to charge the laptop. Apparently, the only way to get around it would be to modify the BIOS. That sounds risky, and it's out of my range of abilities.

Which BIOS version has the fan setting changes to help avoid the GPU overheat/solder failure issue?

Which BIOS version started enforcing the adapter proper ID signal, or refusing to charge?

If I am not mistaken, both changes happened at the same time.

I am not sure why my wife's laptop stopped charging. Replacing the MB fixed it, so I suspect it was a failure of the power jack itself. I don't know why though, as she leaves her laptop in the same place all the time.

OK ... this was a lot of stuff, but I do have a point. I recently found a charger that plugs directly into the battery outside of the laptop to charge it. This would help people charge their battery so they can flash their BIOS to older versions. It's about $40 US. Here is an E-Bay link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280430530808

 

Cool info, I'll test out my power supply from my work laptop, a dell precision.

 

I had the most difficult time with this until I found a post by rlmontagne on the Dell community forum. You can search for the thread with terms like A09, BIOS, "plugged in" "not charging".

Solution for downgrading BIOS when battery has less than 10% power. Go to this link: ( http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm) and follow the tutorial to create a bootable flash disk. In the last step where you are directed to copy all of those files over to the disk, don't, instead, only copy over the A09 executable program to the root of the flash disk.

There should be 4 files on the flash disk - IO.sys, Command.com, msdos.sys and 1530_A09.exe (which can be located on the dell drivers downloads). The first three are Windows98 system files. If you do not see them, you likely have the option to view system files unchecked.

Plug in the flash disk if you have unplugged it.

Restart your computer and press F12 to do a one-time boot. Choose to boot from the flash disk.

windows 98 will flicker and a command prompt will appear. The flash disc may be the c: which you are already in. to check, type DIR and locate the 1530_A09.exe file. If it is there, good. If not, locate the drive of the flash disk and switch to it by typing the drive lettter followed by a colon and pressing enter. E.g. A: <Enter> or B: <Enter>

When you are in the dir with the executable A09 Bios, at the command prompt type:

1530_A09.exe /forceit

Hit enter. The bios should upgrade and when the computer restarts it will be downgraded to A09. This fixed my issues with the battery not charging.

 

Excellent, thank you very much....it seems A12 was the cause of my problems (incidentally, only installed on the recommendation of Dell support before sending me out a new 90w adapter, replacing my battery and finally the mobo!)

18 months I've been trying on and off to find an answer to turn this hot brick into a chargeable laptop! 12 of these months were out of warranty so I didn't want to start throwing money at chargers and batteries when I couldn't be sure it would work and there was nothing ostensibly wrong with the ones I had. I never knew about the forceit switch until today either or I would have tried the downgrade earlier.

Who'd have thought a battery icon filling up could be such a turn on?!?

 

ok, I read all the solutions, buy this buy that

Rolling back to A09 Bios worked for me.

I had to borrow a friends charger to get my battery above 10%, but once done, no problems!!

I still have my webcam problem(unresolved), and my backlight problem(unresolved), along with the battery problem.

Lets face it, the XPS M1530 system, is not very impressive for reliability. Perfect for 1 year, while in warrenty, then goes wonky !!

I was a loyal Dell fan, but I have to admit, im not a loyal customer anymore!

 

twitchthecat, followed your instructions, it worked perfectly. The DOS screen and sounds in the one time boot are very retro. For Vista users, remember the HP bootable flash disk programme requires right click, run as administrator, but you probably already knew that.

All hail king twitchthecat!

 

Brilliant post - worked a treat - have been trying to sort this for ages - I suspected a Dell bios problem but couldnt get battery up past 10% to re-flash it & of course Dell wanted £150 to "repair" it - thanks to your post I didn't need to line their greedy pockets & now have a perfectly charging laptop again - a FANTASTIC help for me- thanks again.

 

Having similar problems. plugged in wont charge. I'd prefer not to downgrade from A15 to A09 since my heat problems are better with A15. Any other ideas?

Also, I recently noticed that after months of giving up on this problem, I mysteriously got a full charge when I was plugged into my TV via HDMI. But I can't seem to reproduce this now. Any hypothesis about this?

I'm tempted to replace and solder on a new plug on the mobo, but would prefer to avoid this.

Thanks!

 

Excellent solution, easy to do and worked fine!, I had A12 BIOS, my laptop had 0% charging and I could not do the A09 Bios reflashed but I did the bootable flash disk procedure and battery is working now and full charged again thanks twitchthecat

 

Greetings,

I have just found this exchange trying to find out the solution to my problem related to battery charging.

Here it is:
My Dell XPS M1530 (Windows 7 HPremium 64bit - BIOS A12) battery stops charging at 78% - 78% available (plugged in, not charging).
I can use it and recharge but always up to 78% (see above).
I have tried several solutions (removing battery, uninstall Microsoft ACPI, etc) in vain.

I was wondering whether it could be 'normal' situation (something kindly prevent the charging to the maximum level to preserve battery life) or is it an abnormal case?

I use the laptop mainly on AC adapter.

I will deeply appreciate any kind suggestion.
Thank you in advance.