laptop ac adaptor problems

bossymommy

Hi. My son has a Dell inspiron 1545 laptop. We had problems with the battery a few weeks ago and so i called up Dell. Luckily it was just in guarantee still and so they sent a replacement battery. The guarantee has now run out. Now the problem is, it won't charge. Get a message saying "plugged in, not charging". So now we can only use the laptop when its plugged in. Could this be to do with the new battery? Or is it the ac adaptor that needs replacing? I went onto Dell website and it was suggested i updated the bios settings, but it wont allow me to as the battery has to be at least 10% charged. Is it worth me buying a new ac adaptor? Or should i ring them again (which i hate because of the language barrier!) to ask for advice?

Voyager2002

The obvious thing to try: find someone else with a Dell laptop, borrow their AC adapter, and see if the battery charges.

Apart from that, see if you can use the live chat support offered by the Dell website (before it connects you, the site asks for the tag number from your computer, and since the guarantee has expired it might not accept your tag number).

victor2

It seems that this is a fairly common problem and there's not always an easy fix, unless you want to pay for a new motherboard.
However, to update the BIOS, does your son know someone else with the same computer. If so, can he get them to put his battery in it and recharge it? Make sure you back everything up if you are going to flash the BIOS, as it could go wrong and render the computer unusable. On a more positive note though, it might just do the trick!