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February 17th, 2007 22:00
Latitude X300 battery charging problem
Hello, I'm using my X300 for quite a long time, the battery was never a problem. It always worked flawlessly and I could use the laptop on the battery for about 1,5 hour. However, for about 3 months I was using it as a desktop. The laptop was constantly plugged to a AC adaptor. Suddenly, I've found out that my laptop would not work without the AC adaptor and the battery shows 0% (BIOS) all the time. If I replug the AC adaptor the battery led (on the laptop case) blinks green (as it should) for about 2 hours. Then the led turns off. However, the battery is still at 0% and will not recharge. The laptop only works with the AC adaptor plugged in (no problems). One more thing, there's a little button on the battery itself which was showing the battery status with the 5 leds on it. Now, when I press it none of the leds are blinking. I don't have a warranty, and I'm thinking what to buy now to fix this. 1) New AC adapter? The actual one looks very good, it's not loose etc. 2) New battery? I've already sent it for repair (some local company fixing batteries, replacing cells). They replaced the cells in the battery. They have also repaired some electrical protection that was broken (that's what they said). When I've received the battery it was about 43% charged, it was working for some time and discharged all the way to 0%. Unfortunately it would not recharge and still stayed at 0%. So no luck here. 3) New motherboard (sic!) ? That would definately make me give up on this laptop because of the prices... Which part is most likely broken in my case? Thanks for any help and sorry for the long post. B.
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Rollie_R
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February 20th, 2007 19:00
omatous
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December 21st, 2011 15:00
did u have any luck with this. I am having the same problem now. tried alot of stuff, nothing.
daveayerst
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August 6th, 2012 03:00
I had a similar problem with my Dell X300 laptop. I finally managed to solve the problem, but it took quite a while to discover.
First of all, you need to exclude the charger and cable from your investigation. If there is no obvious damage, kinks or frayed cable, then the probably is nothing wrong with it. If you can borrow a spare charger, or try your charger on another laptop, if it works then you have to look elsewhere fro the problem.
Having established that the charger is unlikely to be to blame, the problem must lie in the laptop.
1/ When you plug in the charger, does the battery light on the palm-rest status panel flash briefly then stay off?
2/ Do you (or did you once) get the 'Power adaptor not recognised message at boot-up?
3/ Does the laptop work fine under AC adaptor power only?
The centre pin of the power connector socket does not carry power. It carries a signal from the power supply that identifies it to the laptop. Unless that signal is present, the laptop will not charge the battery. The x300 will work fine on external power only, but will refuse to charge the battery.
The MOST LIKELY cause of problems is the power socket (power jack) centre pin connection. Take a look at the socket to see if it is damaged, and look at the pin on the adaptor plug to see if it is broken, bent or missing.
If the external parts of the connection appear to be OK, then the problem must be internal. For my X300 it was the connection between the socket's centre pin connection and the motherboard. The solder connection had cracked and the centre pin was 'open circuit'. Now comes the hard part... to get to it, you need to remove the motherboard.
If you are not confident to do it yourself, or your laptop is still under warranty, then just take the unit to a dell repair shop. To do it yourself, you will need an antistatic workstation, a collection of small screwdrivers, a fine tipped soldering iron and a steady hand. Once you have taken apart the laptop sufficiently to remove the motherboard, just briefly re-melting the solder on the middle pin connection to the motherboard to bridge the gap, should enough to repair your laptop.