**New battery or new power converter thingie for Dell 1520? **

hybernia

13 years on from its £565.00 purchase, my Dell1520 2,048MB RAM / 1.95GHz Intel CPU T7250 256MB/ 160GB hard drive / Nvidia GeForce 8600MGT 15.4" laptop no longer fires up. It's a much loved little computer, though it hasn't been heavily used and is in showroom pristine condition (I've always used a separate plug-in keyboard instead of the keypad itself) I still like to make use of it from time to time. Its OS is the long-departed XP Home Edition but it also has Malwarebytes Pro running in real time, and because that's an active rather than a passive after-the-fact defence I've never felt unsafe or uncomfortable when using it (I'm careful about which websites I go to, and equally ultra careful with emails).

As far as I can make out, the laptop depends for its power on two separate thingies: (1) a large battery and (2) some kind of brick-shaped converter unit / voltage regulator / whatever the term is. The power cable from the wall socket goes into one end of the brick-thing, whilst another cable emerges from the brick-thing and plugs into the back of the laptop.

From what I can make out from reading stuff on the Internet, it's as likely that the Dell's battery has finally died (after all this time) as the voltage regulator/converter thingie has failed.

But which?

The price for a replacement 9-cell 85WH battery isn't cheap. However, it's still nowhere as expensive as the price of a replacement Dell converter thingie.

I can't afford to buy a battery and then discover that it's the Dell converter thingie that needs replacing.

Nor can I afford to buy a Dell converter thingie only to then discover it's the battery that needs replacing.

Unless travelling from home, I always used the laptop at home plugged into the mains. I'm not sure if that kept the battery fully charged or if the power flowed from the mains and bypassed the battery altogether. A blue light used to appear next to the keyboard when the mains wall switch was turned on. Now, there's no blue light at all.

I've had the laptop plugged into the wall for the past couple of hours in vague hope of something happening. However: the brick-block thingie power converter is feeling quite warm. (It used to get pretty hot, once upon a time.)

I don't own a voltmeter or any device for measuring power throughput hence why I'm posting here to ask: does the fact that the brick-shaped power thingie is getting hot signify that the thingie itself is OK but the battery is completely dead?

Advice appreciated from any detectives here who can solve the mystery based on the above clue. Thanks!

J_B

Hmmm

Can you remove the battery? If so, do so.

Unplug the charger cable.

Press and hold the power button for at least 30 seconds - longer if you have the patience!

Leave the battery off and try with the charger plugged in - any use?

Or - try refitting the battery but leave the charger unplugged - any use?

*Brick thingie = you plug into the wall socket which gives out 240 volts. The brick thingie is a transformer that reduces the voltage to 9 volts (perhaps) which then charges the battery and/or powers the laptop

Carrot007

hybernia said:

Unless travelling from home, I always used the laptop at home plugged into the mains. I'm not sure if that kept the battery fully charged or if the power flowed from the mains and bypassed the battery altogether. A blue light used to appear next to the keyboard when the mains wall switch was turned on.

Best way to make the battery useless in under 3 months that.

But on to advise.

Sounds like either the power pack (do you not know someone with a multimeter to test the output?), or just a dead laptop to me. Should work without the battery (try removing it and plugging it in and swithcing on).

I go more for the dead laptop (or maybe a dead backlight and it is switching on? Look at the screen at odd angles to see if it works but no backlight means you can't see anything.

However if it is the power pack buy a cheap know off on amazon if you must. A better machine is £60 online, that might be battered and with a non working battery, but better is better and that laptop was fit for the bin years ago (or a museum, I have many old laptops myself but would not use them for actual work).

HereToday

Utterly ridiculous that someone chose to chug on with XP, 2 GB of RAM and and old mechanical hard disk drive.Clearly stuck in the last century. What a waste.
£30 would have brought the OP up to scratch. Windows7/8/10, 4 GB of RAM and an SSD.
Other than that, the specification is fine; I know as I'm running a similar specced and aged laptop right now.

As little as £25 for a genuine DELL 6-cell 56Wh battery: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ORIGINAL-DELL-INSPIRON-1520-1521-1720-1721-VOSTRO-1500-1700-56WH-GK479-UW284-NEW/274429369190

Higher capacity generic here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Battery-for-Dell-Inspiron-GK479-FK890-1500-1520-1521-1720-1721-Vostro-1700/353177427527 9 Cell £30

Of course this does not mean that the battery is the issue. Check, as has been suggested, if it works without the battery inserted.

Your are confusing yourself by looking at the prices of DELL branded products. Chargers can cost as little as £11; 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Adapter-Charger-For-Dell-Inspiron-1505-1520-1545-1525-M5030-N5010-N5110-PA12-UK/164305043972

hybernia

Very BIG thanks to everyone for corresponding so quickly and so helpfully; apologies for being unable to respond myself until now as |I've been away. I'm most grateful to J_B for the advice as to what-to-do-next, and the explanation about the 'brick thingie'. Yes, I can remove the battery, and will do so later today and then plug the laptop in again and see if anything at all happens other than the transformer getting hotter and hotter.

Thanks too to Carrot007; points taken! I know I should've upgraded the laptop or got rid of it some time ago, but it's of sentimental value to me (though won't  be if it continues to be unusable: it'll have to go off to recycling or something.) I hadn't appreciated, it could work without the battery being installed (but then I guess, that's what the brick thingie was for, to allow mains operation bypassing the battery. Doh.)

Special thanks , too, to HereToday for the detailed explanation and advice -- the links so thoughtfully provided are greatly appreciated; I'm going to follow them once I've tested the laptop along the lines recommended by J_B and Carrot007. I'll also get a quote from our local PC/laptop repair shop as to what they'll charge to upgrade the laptop's mechanicals and OS with a view to sustaining its continued usage.

Once again, then, my gratitude to you all for helping out, and apologies for this unintentionally belated acknowledgment.

HereToday

The "upgrade of the mechanicals" is a user friendly task. You don't need a technician. If you can get it working, I can show you how to fit the parts. It's easy and will take just a few minutes.
The laptop will likely have a special hatch just for the HDD storage drive. So it will be easy to swap.

Chrishazle

I swopped the HDD to SSD on wife's Dell 1720 easily, also upgraded the RAM which was not so easy as 1 of the RAM chips lives under the keyboard (the other is easily accessible) There are Youtube videos showing exactly how to do this - I even managed to change the failed screen!

hybernia

HereToday said:

The "upgrade of the mechanicals" is a user friendly task. You don't need a technician. If you can get it working, I can show you how to fit the parts. It's easy and will take just a few minutes.
The laptop will likely have a special hatch just for the HDD storage drive. So it will be easy to swap.

Many thanks, HereToday: your confidence in my abilities inspires me almost to the point of attempting a task I presume to be way, way beyond my abilities.

However. . . the Good News is that, due entirely to the calibre of the advice here, my gorgeous little silver 1520 laptop is now working again! Oh my ye-esss! I removed the battery, connected it to the transformer 'brick', and waited. Nothing at all happened. After an hour or so I returned to the laptop, unplugged the transformer, and wiggled the lead around, just in case there might be a break in the internal wiring. Well, one has to try.

Amazingly enough or, well, amazingly enough to me, a green light suddenly began glowing in the transformer after I reconnected the lead to the laptop and threw the mains wall switch. Within a few seconds of that, although there was still no power-on blue light showing on the laptop, it booted up when I pressed the silver start button. And I even managed to get Malwarebytes updated to the latest version.

I'm about to order the eBay transformer you so kindly identified. As OH and I have  iPads for when we're travelling anywhere, the little Dell is never going to be leaving home with us again. So I guess I don't need a battery at all; just run it off the mains.

Very sincere thanks -- again -- to everyone who helped out here: collectively, you've made all the difference. Drinks all round, I think (though sadly, virtual. . .)

To be honest, I'm not sure what to do next; it would be good to fit more RAM so as to update the 1520's OS to the one I'm best used to (Windows 7: I tried to get my head around a friend's Windows 10 system but gave up in despair) and to incorporate an SSD (the desktop I'm using was built by an enthusiast/hobbyist and has an AMD FX 4100 quad core processor, 8174Mb RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 (1280Mb) , Asus motherboard, and a C programs SSD drive plus a  1Tb Samsung HDD for documents, photos, videos: it's still a quick performer even with video editing despite dating back to 2013, so the laptop would only be called upon for light duties. As it stands, it's really much too slow to be enjoyable, and especially compared to this desktop PC. But that sentimental appeal still lingers,especially as I've kept it looking brand new from the day I first got it.

@Chrishazle: changing a screen, huh?  Lost in admiration here.

HereToday

The SSD will make a huge difference. No more waiting for minutes for it to start up nor for the spinning slow storage drive to stop thrashing around.

It will be seconds rather than minutes.

SSD: https://www.mymemory.co.uk/memory/data-storage/ssd-drives.html?capacity=72_109&dir=asc&order=price

RAM:  2 x https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XUM-2GB-4GB-Memory-RAM-Laptop-PC2-5300-DDR2-667-200-Non-ECC-Unbuffered-Lot/324242262413

or 2 x https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail?id=smem9ddh&categoryName=memory-laptop-ddr2&superCatName=computing&title=2-gb-pc5300-ddr2-667mhz-200-pin-memory

HereToday

hybernia said:

HereToday said:

The "upgrade of the mechanicals" is a user friendly task. You don't need a technician. If you can get it working, I can show you how to fit the parts. It's easy and will take just a few minutes.
The laptop will likely have a special hatch just for the HDD storage drive. So it will be easy to swap.

Many thanks, HereToday: your confidence in my abilities inspires me almost to the point of attempting a task I presume to be way, way beyond my abilities.

However. . . the Good News is that, due entirely to the calibre of the advice here, my gorgeous little silver 1520 laptop is now working again! Oh my ye-esss! I removed the battery, connected it to the transformer 'brick', and waited. Nothing at all happened. After an hour or so I returned to the laptop, unplugged the transformer, and wiggled the lead around, just in case there might be a break in the internal wiring. Well, one has to try.

Amazingly enough or, well, amazingly enough to me, a green light suddenly began glowing in the transformer after I reconnected the lead to the laptop and threw the mains wall switch. Within a few seconds of that, although there was still no power-on blue light showing on the laptop, it booted up when I pressed the silver start button. And I even managed to get Malwarebytes updated to the latest version.

I'm about to order the eBay transformer you so kindly identified. As OH and I have  iPads for when we're travelling anywhere, the little Dell is never going to be leaving home with us again. So I guess I don't need a battery at all; just run it off the mains.

Very sincere thanks -- again -- to everyone who helped out here: collectively, you've made all the difference. Drinks all round, I think (though sadly, virtual. . .)

To be honest, I'm not sure what to do next; it would be good to fit more RAM so as to update the 1520's OS to the one I'm best used to (Windows 7: I tried to get my head around a friend's Windows 10 system but gave up in despair) and to incorporate an SSD (the desktop I'm using was built by an enthusiast/hobbyist and has an AMD FX 4100 quad core processor, 8174Mb RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 (1280Mb) , Asus motherboard, and a C programs SSD drive plus a  1Tb Samsung HDD for documents, photos, videos: it's still a quick performer even with video editing despite dating back to 2013, so the laptop would only be called upon for light duties. As it stands, it's really much too slow to be enjoyable, and especially compared to this desktop PC. But that sentimental appeal still lingers,especially as I've kept it looking brand new from the day I first got it.

@Chrishazle: changing a screen, huh?  Lost in admiration here.

Don't waste money on such an elementary task. If I state that you can do it; you can do it;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgowRcaTOwQ

It would take a Tech two minutes to swap the storage drive. It might take you five minutes.

A bit more fiddly, is the RAM replacement: https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2015/11/05/dell-inspiron-1520-ram-memory-under-keyboard-removal-installation/

If you don't feel comfortable in removing the keyboard, you can consider just leaving the system running on 2 GB of RAM. It is not worth paying a Technician £50 or more plus VAT for such an old device. It will actually run fine on 2GB and an SSD.

I'll show you;

Click to play the video and compare the device with 2GB of RAM, though with a solid state storage drive fitted, against the device with 8 GB of RAM but with the old technology spinning disc drive that you have fitted now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn6zxoh3oK4


Fitting an SSD will make a much more significant difference than adding more RAM in your case.

I'll help you to install the 32 bit OS of your choice to the SSD.. Windows 10 is fine; you just need to set it up properly in the first instance. Then it's not much different from Windows 7 in day to day usage.

hybernia

@HereToday: I'm really intruding too much on your time and goodwill, but anyway . . . 

Many thanks for all the info you've so kindly put together in that last post. The two videos certainly demystified things for me --  I loved the multi-screen video highlighting SSD performance with only a minimal amount of RAM compared to HDD performance with 400% more.

I'm encouraged enough to give it a go.

I'm not sure though about the brand / capacity of SSD that I should be looking to buy to replace the existing HDD? I don't need a high capacity drive because the external drives I have are more than sufficient for backup purposes, but I'd hate to purchase too small an SSD for everyday purposes.

The MyMemory link you provided is also much appreciated because we have an account with them; it's just that I'm not sure what would most sensibly replace the Dell's HDD. I've had a look through MM's stock list and they have 480GB SSDs from SanDisk and Kingston, either of which I'm inclined to choose -- I don't mind spending a little bit more for the higher capacity by way of helping to 'future proof' the laptop for a little bit longer.

Right. I've pestered you enough today. Seriously, sincere thanks for the guidance and confidence-building!