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Problem description: Back in June my refurbished Dell Precision 5520 laptop stopped taking a charge - when the power adapter was plugged in the battery would very slowly drain down to zero. At first it was intermittent, and at boot I would get a warning that the bios couldn't identify the charger, so performance could be impacted. Sometime a reboot would fix it, or fiddling with where the power cord went into the jack. But after a couple weeks of this it stopped working completely. Attempted fixes: So I bought a replacement charger from Amazon but it did not help the problem (same error message on boot about not recognizing the power adapter). I took the computer into the local PC repair shop and he identified it as needing a new DC jack. He ordered it, replaced it, and the computer worked fine for a couple of months. In the meantime I also bought a new battery b/c the refurbished one it came with had dropped below 50% health. Swapped the battery no problem and enjoyed nice, long battery life until two weeks ago when the problem re-occurred. Again the computer will not take a charge at all, and once the battery drained to zero I could not boot, it just flashed its little power light weakly at me. I pulled the battery connector off, and it booted up on AC power alone using the power adapter - a little slow, however, like it wasn't getting the full amount of juice. Since that sort of worked, I figured the battery was cooked, so I bought another replacement battery and put it in, but the computer just did the same thing - the battery would not charge. It just slowly drained from 50% down to zero over the course of a few hours. Thinking maybe the DC port had gone bad again, I took it back to the local repair shop. Repair shop guy told me the port looks good and that its probably an issue with where the battery connects to the motherboard, and that it is going to be way too expensive to fix. He suggested returning the battery and trying a new one just to make sure its not just a string of bad batteries, but he seemed confident it was a problem in the battery/motherboard connection and that it wouldn't be worth fixing, cost-wise. I guess I'm just looking for a second opinion to see if I need to go computer shopping, or if there could be something else to check? I will RMA the battery back to Amazon and get a new one, but I'm pretty doubtful that's the issue since the last two batteries did the exact same thing. edit: I just pulled the battery and tried to boot it straight from the AC adapter and now it won't boot at all - I get about 3 seconds of fan noise then it shuts down. Tried both adapters with the same result. That seems bad?? edit2: I ordered a new DC jack from Amazon and will test it out tomorrow when it arrives. If that solves it I'll close the thread. Recent changes: As described above, I have replaced the battery twice and had the local repair guy replace the DC port, as well as using two different power adapters. -- Operating system: Ubuntu System specs: Dell Precision 5520 (refurbished from Dell outlet) - 16mb RAM, 512 SSD, Xenon E3 processor. Location: USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes Hawklad fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 23:13
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With dells, the onewire system, bad diode, blown capacitor/FET, or an overload protection blew. This translates into motherboard work, which is likely either beyond him or too expensive. There are schematics for your system, so I could probably repair it but I charge a lot too. Dell also has very strict requirements regarding their power adapters. There must be a 3rd (center) pin, and the jack should mate with this 3rd pin snugly. The adapter must have a resistance between this pin and ground at a specific value to charge. This sounds like the power chip isn't getting power at all though. Does your laptop use usb-c charging as well? Is the issue there with USB-c charging? Pm me if you can I forget threads sometimes
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Oct 10, 2023 23:23
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Thanks for the reply! It does not have USB-C charging, unfortunately. The new jack did not work, so it looks like motherboard issue so I'll go shopping for a new device. Appreciate your feedback.
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Oct 12, 2023 02:49
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