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May 11th, 2016 16:00

Battery not charging: is it DC power jack or motherboard fault?

When I boot my Inspiron 15R-5537, I get this message:

"The AC adapter wattage and type cannot be determined. The battery may not charge. The system will adjust the performance to match the power available. Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter or greater for the best system performance."

The AC adapter (it is a 90-watt AC adapter) does not charge the battery and the laptop keeps in low-power mode, it is, the CPU clock gets stuck at 780 MHz, while it can go up to 2,3 GHz in full power mode. When I say it doesn't charge the battery, I mean it starts charging for a while, and then the power LED turns off and the battery icon says  it's connected, but not charging. I've already bought a new 90-watt charger directly from Dell and it didn't fix the issue. When I use the battery alone, the CPU can get to 2,3 GHz just fine, meaning it isn't the battery either.

So I'm left with two options: it's either the DC jack, or the motherboard. From what I've read, this DC jack has a hole in the centre which receives the pin in the AC adapter connector, and this pin tells the laptop which is the wattage the power adapter can supply, which is 90 W for this laptop model.

Do you think replacing this jack can solve this issue, or is most likely a hardware issue with the motherboard?

This is what I'm talking about:

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87.5K Posts

May 11th, 2016 16:00

The jack will be under $30, while a mainboard is $200+, so try the jack first.  If that doesn't solve the problem, it's the mainboard.

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