Inspiron 1545 Battery not charging

Hi drumon,

I would suggest you to try the below steps to see if it works.

1: Update Bios: below is the link to download Bios.

http://dell.to/SNfB1u

2: Release flee power:  Switch off the system; remove the battery, ac adapter and the power cable. Press and hold down the power button for thirty seconds to drain any excess flea power 

Please do get back to us for further assistance or information.

Thanks

I've tried "releasing flea power" many times, with no change to the present situation.

I cannot update bios without minimum 10% battery.  I have 0% battery and cannot charge it at the moment - how do I get round this in order to try your BIOS suggestion?

Hello again

I now have managed to download the updated BIOS (BIOS A14) according to your link.

Still the battery is not charging.....  What else can you suggest?

Hi drumon,

The problem might be with the battery or the motherboard.

I would suggest you to try with a known good battery if you have and see if it works.

If it works the issue is with the battery or else the motherboard is faulty.

Please do get back to us for further assistance or information.

Hi

I tried a Dell battery, which is same shape and voltage, (though different model number).  That did charge up.

So do you think its normal that an adapter could fail and a battery fail at the same time?  

I've been looking at a Dell 1545 with battery charging issues also, and have not yet solved it.

It is not my own, so I don't know the full details, but the original battery apparently recently stopped charging.  A new (non-Dell) battery also fails to charge.  

Symptoms: Viewed in BIOS, the battery shows 0%, and alternates every few seconds between Charging and Idle.  The AC Adapter is recognised as a 65W device, which is correct.

On the Vista system tray icon, the pattern of charging/not charging seen in the BIOS is repeated.

Removing the AC adaptor causes the PC to die immediately.

Connecting the AC adaptor leads to the Standby LED turning on after a few seconds, where it remains a steady white illumination until power is removed (turning off instantly), or until the unit is put into standby, where it modulates the brightness.

WIth the PC Off, Battery removed, AC adapter turned on and plugged in, a switched mode power supply can be heard inside the PC when the battery is slotted in.

I have tried clearing the "flea power" as suggested above, but this makes no difference.

I updated the BIOS from A05 to A14 by downloading from

www.dell.com/.../driverdetails

and then created a shortcut to the downloaded file, edited the shortcut properties so that the Target field was appended to read

"C:\Users\Owner\Downloads\BIOS\DOS Only Exe\1545_A14.EXE" /forceit

and on the Advanced options, selected "Run as Administrator".  This installed A14 OK, but made no difference to the problem.

A multimeter shows the battery terminals at 0V (measured removed from PC).  The PC battery terminals (battery removed) only shows 1.3V when the AC Adapter is fitted.

Without another reference system to evaluate battery behaviour with, I'm a bit stuck for ideas.  Supposedly, the problems with the battery may have happened around the time that the hard disk was changed, but that isn't clear.

So, summarising, the battery status seems good, but is failing to charge, and an internal SM power supply alters behaviour in the presence of the battery.

Any insight is most welcome.

Make sure that the power adapter is ALWAYS properly recognized in the BIOS.A loose connection could easily cause communication problems between the BIOS and the adapter.

When I say the AC Adaptor is recognised as a 65W device, I mean that the BIOS recognises this authentic Dell AC Adaptor as a 65W device.  I've seen no evidence of this being intermittent, and the alternating "charging" and "idle" states are witnessed without any movement of the cable or the laptop, and appears to be entireley repeatable and cyclic wherever I set up the PC.

The PC status reports (both BIOS and Windows Vista) indicate that the battery is healthy, but alternating between charging and idle, and remaining at 0%, while the multimeter suggests it is completely discharged, but is there a FET holding the battery off?

To repair a mainboard on chip level is almost impossible and to narrow down the problem - no matter what the BIOS or OS tells you - is to

1. replace the battery (borrowed one)

2. replace the power adapter (borrowed one)

3. make sure that the battery is being charged while the laptop is turned off (LED should be on if battery is partly discharged)

========

Should it turn out that the mainboard is the problem you might as well try updating the BIOS (don't think it will fix the problem and could also easily damage the mainboard if the update process fails...

Something that I did discover is that with the PC Off, battery fitted and the AC adapter powered and plugged in, if I then remove the battery and carefully check the voltage on the +ve and -ve pins of the PC's battery terminals, I can see a voltage decaying gracefully from around 12V, so the PC is trying to offer a suitable charging voltage to the battery, util it detects the battery has been removed.  In the absence of knowing where to borrow another battery or Dell 1545 from, I think we will have to return the battery, and try a replacement.