I keep getting the "plugged in and not charging" message. Anyone can help me?

 

try taking the battery out and putting it back in while the laptop is off, or starting it in safe mode

 

I will try that later when i get home. Thanks Stephen

 

your cord could be shot, i have gone through 2 cords since i got my laptop a year ago, try someone elses power cord

 

The above are good places to start, a quick online search found others with the same issue two causes were the battery and the power adapter.

Do you have any lights on the power adapter to confirm that it is getting power?

Do you have any lights on the laptop to confirm it is connected okay?

If you pull the battery off does the computer turn on when it is connected to the power adapter only.

How old is your laptop and what operating system are you running?

 

its 16 months old. When I plug it to the AC and take out the battery it works. Theres a light on the power adapter that indicates its getting power. Windows Vista. I'm pretty sure its the battery. I went to the system setup and went to battery health and its says that I need to replace the battery because it was permanently damaged. My HP lasted for 4 years before I had to replace the battery. Stupid Dell. A new battery costs $170

 

go to the dell website and look for CMOS updates... could be something in your BIOS that needs to be updated...

 

Depending on how you treated the battery it may be time to replace it. Most people don’t let their batteries run all the way down before charging them which leads to a short life for the battery.

As for the battery not lasting as long the power requirements of today’s computers is actually higher than the older ones and unfortunately battery technology has not advanced as quick as computer technology. Most manufacturers only warrantee their batteries for 30 days to one year even on systems that may have a three year warrantee the battery is usually only covered for one year.

As for pricing on the battery shop around you can find it for less.

http://www.nextag.com/dell-battery-xps-1330/search-html

http://www.pacificbattery.com/dell1300.html

http://www.batteryedge.com/ProductDe...FQO2FQod2k8NtA

 

wow thanks for the links

 

first problem is it's a dell. second you're running vista. but yeah it sound like a dead battery. but only after a year sounds questionable. ( see first sentence ) my hp lasted about 5 years and only now does the battery drain in about 1 hour from playing a dvd. but now i'm back in the linux game. don't know why i ever left. you should give it a shot. you might like it

 

linux? not reall sure what that is.

 

lol dont do linux unless u know how to work OS well... its fun.. only if u know how to use it...

 

I am SOOO biting my tongue right now.... I am an I.T. professional that runs my own company....and has more than 20 years of experience......if the "owner" of this thread wants a true answer....PM me.

 

maybe i'll go back to windows XP.

 

Umm, laptops use Lithium Ion batteries, not Nickel Metal Hydride like they used to, so they don't have this memory that makes the battery get worse over time. That is no longer true.

It is much more likely that his battery was faulty to begin with, 'dead' or 'damaged' cells can account for this, and this should be covered under warranty completely, the warranty on those batteries of varying length is only if you don't buy it *with* a computer.

Also computers today while they might have a higher power draw at full capacity, are much smarter with using their resources, laptops especially are designed to lower the current (voltage) through the processor and it's speed if it is not needed, any prior to a pentium m did not do this, so they are a lot better on battery life than they once were, they require less battery density to run just as long, which also makes them much safer that previous laptop batteries.

WHAT?
Seeing as your a linux advocate you should *like* dell as they're actually selling ubuntu linux based desktops and laptops to the masses now, they're making linux a viable operating system for the every-man.

Also, they have very good customer support online and on the phones, even if you're out of warranty their repair charges are fair, that is, considering you're paying a professional to fix whatever it is you need done, sure you could ebay the part and do it yourself, but that's another thing every-man can't do; not to mention they have great prices on all of their stuff (unless you're a system-builder yourself, then yeah, it can be had cheaper); they also have their own rate up/down page where customers can voice their opinions on what dell should do next, sort of a digg clone, and it works, that's how ubuntu got onto their machines.

And then there's the vista quip, which has *much* better power control than xp, you can turn off individual hardware and set behavior for pretty much anything, sure it's defaults aren't awesome, but it's a heck of a lot more secure than xp overall, and if you have a machine with decent specs, it shouldn't be a problem; also note that it's large memory footprint is because it was designed that way, RAM uses *much* less power than HD, so instead of doing a ton of hard drive caching, it's designed to use RAM to hold your most commonly used items, which is not only much faster, it's much lower draw on your battery, sure it's not using ram for the swap file, but with it's technology it has to access the swap much less than xp would have to.

Unused RAM is wasted RAM; you paid for it, the system should use it, it's smart enough to know when to dump stuff if you need more for your active applications. If I have RAM that isn't working for me, it's a waste of capacity the machine could be using for sorting swap or indexing or a whole slew of useful things, which is what Vista and even now Windows 7 (is still) designed to do.

 

I talked to one of the dell people and they say that the battery has a 1 year warranty. I bought this laptop over a year ago. But I did buy a 3 year extended warranty on the laptop so does that cover the battery too?

 

If they tell you it doesn't, than that's the way it is, you could argue that it's a faulty part or something, but that's up to them to define.

 

Damn Optional, try not to own qrymson so hard next time, pretty sure you shot down everything he said and everything he was going to say. addaboy.

 

*cough*....damn

 

Dell does have good online support.