Battery no long charging in my Laptop (Dell Inspiron 1501)

OK,

So we assume the power pack is OK. Is the light on? Is there a voltage? If you use a multimeter.

Does the laptop run if you have external power pack connected and battery out?

Next, and this is what has happened to me recently is.
The socket for the power plug on the laptop has had a bit of a hard life and has pulled the solder off the motherboard. If you wiggle the plug, does the battery charge?

I opened my laptop, tried to solder to no avail, in fact I made it worse.
If this is the case...take it to the professionals.

Hope this helps (I bought a new machine).

T

you can test if the AC adaptor outputs 19 V; and if the power comes to the laptop board at the input jack
that is about all you can do - except testing with a known good battery
if it still does not charge, your charging circuits are probably bad
**seems a very old laptop - right ?

If it has an'intelligent' charging circuit it may have become confused over time and think the battery is charged, whatever the state of the battery actually is.
Try taking the battery out alltogether and power up and down just from the external supply. Then reconnect the battery and try again. Some devices like tohave the battery disconnected and no power for 24hours or more to reset their memory, but a simple power up with no battery saved a device/battery for me.

Problem in you laptop charging socket ..
You need to replace it.

But when you will be going  to change it..then try with another spare charger.

Talk to your vendor, most likely the AC adapter has gone bad if battery is intact...

In case you have already updated the BIOS to the latest from the Dell support site it has to be the DC-in port where the AC adapter connects. Talk to the out of warranty department of Dell and see if they have the DC-in port separately which will work out cheaper. In case not then you would have to go for a complete motherboard replacement.

The DC-in port is not repairable and if you do manage to get it repaired it wont last much so dont waste your money on it.

Eamon, if the pc runs fine from AC adapter, then theres nothing wrong with the DC input jack

Having tried all else I  removed battery and power supply and then pressed start button for 20 seconds (Nobus’s suggestion). Something has happened which I cannot explain.  When I restarted I had the  power supply disconnected and one of my three batteries inserted. Amazingly the laptop has now booted perfectly from the battery. (Formerly the battery was registering 0 (zero percent charge) in the Power Meter Window. And when I tried to start from battery I received warning to turn immediately to power supply.)  Now the Power Meter is telling me that the ‘Current Power Source’ is A.C. and that the Battery Type is ‘Unknown’ (no information as to whether the battery is charging, or how much it has charged, is given). Even more curious still, the battery Icon which displays on bottom right of taskbar (to show that the power is coming from the battery) is NOT on display. According to the information the laptop is running on the AC power supply. But that supply is disconnected so it couldn’t be.
This could only happen in Nigeria, where I am at the present moment.

In this connection, my power is coming from Solar, and the DC voltage coming out of the power supply (measured just now on a non-digital  voltmeter) reads about 30 volts. On other occasions  my power supply comes from Generator, and sometimes from the  intermittent public supply  (known as NEPA, which can fluctuate  widely in voltage and current). Voltage regulators not available to me.
My next step is to insert  a second battery and connect to power supply. I  immediately notice the battery charging light is on.  Two hours later the light is gone out. I boot up, go to Power Meter and lo and behold it is back to normal. The battery is now 100% full (it tells me). The same for my third battery.

It worked Nobus. Thanks a million.

>>  Something has happened which I cannot explain.  <<  but i can !
the procedure you did  drains all electric charges from the motherboard, so, if a bit got stuck - that blocked your battery/charging system -  and it was reset by it, you have a normal working system again!  but it still indicates that you had a problem in that area (so it is possible for other problems to show up there)

Thanks for the info on this.

tx ! but when i see the different power sources you're using; i'd say : be VERY careful with those, in regard to overvoltage, and spikes!