Dell XPS M1210 odd charging problem

otispunkmeyer

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Just picked up a Dell XPS M1210 from flea bay for a good price.

I know its old, but its a decent small hack that I can use for a few months before getting rid of it again.

Though I am thinking I should just get rid of it now!!! lol The screen is a bit too dim and yellow for my liking, but thats CCFL for you. Ive been spoilt with eye scorching brightness from my iMac for too long.

anyway. the charging problem

Apparently the battery is fine, it just takes a while to charge. Its the 9-Cell Jobbie. Howeve when I plug the power adaptor in the charge light comes on for 30 seconds then goes off. Windows still reports that the battery is charging but the % never seems to improve.

It must of charged at some point because I received it fully charged.

I used a wall meter and I see that it really doesn't pull any power off the wall when supposedly charging. 0.04 Amp and 3 watts. Adaptor seems fine though, it can power the laptop on its own without the battery, drawing something like 40W from the wall.

So is this just a dead battery? or something else?
 
is the adapter dell made or 3rd party one, since some of the manufacterus tend to use 3 wires instead of 2 to indicate if the charger/adapter is their own or 3rd party knock of.
Those devices still allowe the machine to power and to be used, but not allowe it to charge the battery "to prevent battery damage".

other than that, i assume the battery is eighter dead OR the powerplug in the machine.
 
Ok little update...

The laptop does actually charge even though the light isn't illuminated. However its like trickle charge, its taken best part of 20 hours to do 30%.

Think the adapter is alright, its pulling 40w from the wall when the machine is on. Just very little when the machine is off and supposedly charging.

Ok downloaded Battery Mon:
its a 85Whr battery and it seems 20Whr's have up and left. Thats a lot, but I guess for a 4-5 year old battery, to be expected. Charging rate is 1200mWhrs roughly. Which is, I presume per hour. Which I guess is small.

So there is some charge going into the battery... question is why isn't it charging at the normal rate?
 
Last edited:
Ok little update...

The laptop does actually charge even though the light isn't illuminated. However its like trickle charge, its taken best part of 20 hours to do 30%.

Think the adapter is alright, its pulling 40w from the wall when the machine is on. Just very little when the machine is off and supposedly charging.

Ok downloaded Battery Mon:
its a 85Whr battery and it seems 20Whr's have up and left. Thats a lot, but I guess for a 4-5 year old battery, to be expected. Charging rate is 1200mWhrs roughly. Which is, I presume per hour. Which I guess is small.

So there is some charge going into the battery... question is why isn't it charging at the normal rate?
Well the battery is under 80% capacity so that's definitely a problem and is considered to be a dead battery. Trickle charge could very well be an issue with the charge controller, my fiancee gave her charger a bath (magsafe thing) and somewhat fried the controller. That resulted in the trickle charge, her battery is fine it charges from mine fine. If you can test with another dell charger somehow it would probably be best.
 
previous owner said he kept the machine plugged in almost 24/7 and the power brick gets very hot. So I assume the charger could be damaged in someway? Yeah I'll try find another charger to try, then another battery. See whats what.
 
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