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Hi all,

I have brand new Inspiron 1520.
Battery fully charged, when I unplug the charger from the wall, but let the plug in the Inspiron for a while (let's say a night), when I startup my computer, I get the message "The AC power adapter type cannot be determined. Your system will operate slower and the battery will not charge. Please connect a Dell 90W AC adapter or higher for best system operation" (needless to say that the power adapter IS a Dell 90W...).
Unplugging and replugging the adapter solves the problem.

I have the same message under Windows when I unplug the adapter from the wall, leaving the plug on the computer side while the commuter is running (to go from one room to another for eg.)

I have contacted Dell support, they asked me to reflash the Bios (already done) then, they sent me an new power adapter : same problem... now they are talking about a mainboard replacement !

While Googling for a solution I've seen this is a very common and long term issue on Dell computers.

Are there any people around here that had the same issue and managed to have Dell correct it ?

My computer recently displayed a "AC Power Adapter is not determined." message. I did not change anything, all I did was go to a friend's house and plug it in and it appeared there. Taking out battery and holding down power for 10 sec won't work. It appears everytime, and my battery is slowly being drained. Help!

I have a Dell XPS M1330. Recently, I had been having problems with the graphics and video driver on my computer. My screen will sometimes freeze and go to a screen that is black and has various different lines on it and then the computer will either shut down or recover.

I tried reinstalling the graphics driver, and am continuing to experience this problem.

I bought the computer last November 2007 -- so it is relatively new.

If you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem, please let me know.

Purchased my M1330 just over 12 months ago and was working fine until last night (except for Vista which really sucks - but that's another story).

Last night the M1330 wouldn't power up when I pressed the "Power" button. Even more strange was the fact that the Dell supplied power adaptor itself would go dead (blue LED would turn off) when I plugged it into the laptop. For the record I have a spare extended battery (fuly charged) and a spare power adapter (rarely used) - and neither one made a difference.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. First plugged in the power adapter into a wall outlet - blue LED light comes on
2. Plugged in the power adaptor to the M1330 - blue LED light turns off!
3. Tried powering up M1330 - nothing happens - no keyboard lights, no noise - nothing
4. Checked extended battery (fully charged - all LEDs light up)
5. Tried unplugging the power adaptor and powering up M1330 - nothing
6. Swapped in the spare extended battery (fully charged) - and tried powering up again - nothing
7. Swapped to a spare power adapter and plugged it in - same issue as #2 above - the blue LED turns off!
8. Tried powering up the M1330 with the spare power adapter plugged in - again nothing.

My assumption is that the motherboard or internal power circuitry has short-circuited (which might explain why the power adapter LEd turns off when it is plugged in).

The frustrating part is that I might just be only a few days out of my warranty - I purchased this unit in the first week of April, and it died last night (April 29th).

What are my options?

I'm having more motherboard problems with my XPS M1330. :-(

When the AC adapter is plugged in it will not charge. The suddenly started happening yesterday, even if I wiggle the AC adapter nothing happens. I'm in IT Support (even been to Round Rock for DCSE training) and since we lease Dell computers at work I have a lot of known good equipment to test with, my battery and AC adapter are working perfect in another M1330.

I've never gotten the "adapter type cannot be determined" error. It just stopped charging all together today. My guess is heat burned the power port out?

Of course though my warranty is expired, it expired days before my computer started showing the lines across the screen indicating the Nvidia GPU problem a little less then a year ago. Thankfully I could do the replacement myself because since my warranty expired Dell would only do a "parts only" repair meaning they would only send me the part. Swapping out a mobo has to be one of the most tedious tasks on the planet.

Even after my motherboard was replaced with the latest BIOS versions and the fan running constantly my M1330 still tends to run hot, that's one reason it's never left my desk. I can't help but think it's related.

My battery for my Dell Inspiron 1520 will not charge. My AC Adapter is fine and powering the laptop, but the battery, that IS connected (I have taken it out and put it back in) has remained at 0% for the last few days. I recently posted this complaint in another thread, but after reading so many similar complaints, I realized I should make my own. I now understand the warranty for a battery is 1 year, but I have a few very frustrating issues with this:
First, I purchased the 3 year extended warranty assuming all parts would be included- this is, to me, common sense regardless of whether the battery is considered a consumable product or not.
Second, I have had this laptop for only 13 and half months! This feels terrible- a product which I have had a 1 year warranty for (which I assumed was 3 years) has died a month and a half after it would have been freely replaced. I am a poor college student, and this laptop was expensive enough when I bought it!
And last, I have rarely used this battery! I have taken it on only 4-5 car trips, and I can not even recall the last time (minus right now) the battery went to 0%, as I ALWAYS have it plugged in; in fact, I would surmise that if I were to use my battery as much as the average user (certainly more than me) then this battery probably would have died long ago when it was actually under its separate and special warranty! Should I be penalized for rarely using what appears to be a bad product? After all, minus the aforementioned car rides, the only time I've really used the battery is when the charger has accidentally been unplugged! As I responded in the other thread, if a product is going to be considered consumable, perhaps it should do its job more than a handful of times before malfunctioning!
I do hope this is a different problem altogether and not my battery, and if so, I apologize, but, after reading many similar situations, the only problem here seems to be with the battery, and this is very frustrating!

Dell can't get my M1730 (T7700 8700M) working properly. Tech support has been the worst I have ever experienced with a vendor. Multiple calls, hours of diagnoses, multiple disconnects, multiple no call-backs. Dell first replaced HDD ribbon cable, then replaces Video card, CPU, heat sink and fans. Now able to consistently recreate SLI problem on a fresh install with Dell remote assisting and hardware fails. I suspect that the M1730 (T7700 8700M) is a faulty combination of hardware. Now they want to come out and replace the motherboard. With about 80 hours invested in self diagnosis and working with Dell and a year of pain I've had it.

Hi, the battery in my M1330 laptop has recently been undergoing issues with charging the battery. When the AC adapter is unplugged and a percentage of battery is lost, the battery will not recharge once the adapter is plugged in again. The battery power hovers at the percentage that it was prior to plugging in the adapter. When I roll over the battery icon in the system tray, the balloon reads "95% available (plugged in, not charging)".

Also, when powering up, a screen comes up saying "The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined. The battery may not charge. The system will adjust the performance the power available. Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter."

I have also done a battery test to try and diagnose the problem. When I press the button on the battery, all 5 lights on the battery clearly light up (which I understand translates that the battery is in normal working order). I can assume that it is not a problem with the battery nor the motherboard, leaving me thinking that it is the AC adapter. I also recently flashed the BIOS (today) and am now using revision A15 (latest for the M1330).

This has only become a problem recently. As a full-time student, this greatly hinders my ability to efficiently do my work; I cannot always find an outlet to plug in my adapter. It seems as though this has become a desktop, having to find an outlet wherever I do my work.

I believe the warranty on the laptop has recently expired by barely a month (if that). I've been browsing this website and also have seen others complain of very similar problems, almost all happening just after the warranty expired. I also hear that "Bill" is the one to talk to on here to help further diagnose my problems. Any help would be great appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Purchased a Dell XPS M1730 last in Feb 08. I use this as my primary workstation doing graphic design. I've never really had any issues with it.

I had got a nasty virus on the machine two weeks ago and wound up calling Dell about reinstalling the operating system and drivers (my machine didn't come with the driver reinstall disk so they sent one out. Without asking the tech transferred my to someone that really (pushy and rude) tried to hard sell the warrenty extension (was up in two days). I declined because I'd never really had any issues with the machine.

Low and behold the battery totally died within 16 hours of the warrenty's expiration. Won't charge, won't show in bios, but in Quickset it shows thats "Battery is operating normally" but there is now charging bars under the charge tab. Every now and then I get the flashing amber (3 x) and blue (1 x) or just a steady amber flash.

I hardly every used it on battery mode anyway, but when I did it would last a good hour and 15 minutes. In one day of warrenty expiration it goes totally dead?

When I look online I find scores of people with the same issue, Dell battery goes toes up within days of warrenty expiration and are "forced to buy new batteries".

I find this suspicious to say the least, and I can't even contact tech support via chat becuase of the warrenty issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The charge of the battery drops so fast that not even any warning messages can be displayed. It does not display any low power or critical power messages anymore. At some point it just switches off.

The laptop is 13 months and 2 weeks old. So it is just out of warranty (does it even cover batteries?). I got the first warning a few weeks ago saying my battery has 46% of its original capacity, now it is 39%.

To be honest, as often as I use this laptop, I would understand that I have to buy a new battery at some point. The problem I have is quite simple: a new battery costs as much as the thing is worth by now.

In feb 08 I've bought XPS 1330, despite the fact that I had a few problems with it (questionable build quality, had motherboard replaced) I still love it. But a week ago my battery started to go crazy.
It's 6-cell battery, 56Wh. Using PC Wizard I was able to find out that full charge capacity is already only 26Wh which is quite low given the fact that only 16 months has passed. But there is more, now It won't charge more that 26%, laptop shows that it's charging but nothing happens.
Is there is anything I can do to revive my battery?

Dell still can't get my M1730 (T7700 8700M) working properly. I have an on-site repair contract and the machine has been repair on-site 3 times.

I had posted before about this issue and that was after the first on-site repair and hundreds of hours of troubleshooting and tech support blaming everything but the computer.

Posting here did help a little and a representative from Texas contacted me and attempted to help. Kudos to you Matt... but the problem is now that it's 3+ weeks later and I am still without a working computer.

Well after the first repair things got faster, after the second repair the hiccuping went away (but video corruption arrive) and after the third repair the M1730 freezes after 5 minutes of use.

Additionally, Dell technical support (the escalation department mind you) violated the on-site support contract that I purchased and they tried to cover it up.

This is very interesting too because now Dell is trying to stall in answering my calls for some reason... but I HAVE A SUPPORT CONTRACT.

I asked the Dell rep to replace my XPS laptop with an XPS desktop since I have friends with the XPS desktops and they are happy with them. The Dell rep says that they won't replace a laptop with a desktop... I ask if it's policy and he says it is not policy, they just won't.

All I want is a working computer, top of the line, that I paid good money for (over 3K). I also would like the last year of my life back from Dell's support in denial, please.

Anyone else having ac adapter/charger problems with Inspiron 1525? Mine quit working altogether last Thursday night, I was sent a new one because my laptop is still under warranty. The new one was fabulous... for the first 24 hours. I just unplugged the charger to move to another location in my house, plugged the adapter back in, and the green light will not come on. I tried several outlets, and nothing. What causes this, and what can I do to fix it? My computer is not that old, I just got it about 4 or 5 months ago.