Dell Latitude D600 - AC Not Charging Battery

I unplugged my power adapter for hours and when I plug it back in it still doesn't charge my battery, but thank you for your reply and ideas. I have written Dell twice now about the problem and have not had a reply, they must know about this problem?? Ya think?? I did get an automatic response from Dell that says that someone from support will answer my question in 48 hours or less and it has been over a week! Unbelievable! If anyone has any other ideas please let me know. I am waiting on my new after market adapter and if it does work I will certainly let you know. Thanks again to everyone for their ideas, it is greatly appreciated! Mahalo!

I have been having the same problem with my D610 for several months. "Warning: An unknown AC power adapter has been detected, > preventing optimal system performance. Strike the F3 key (before the F1> or F2 key) if you do not want to see power warning messages again." I have tried replacing the battery, replacing the charger, and searching the forums for a solution but without success. Finally, earlier today, I saw a post over at FixYa from warnakula that suggested updating the BIOS. I downloaded and reinstalled the latest BIOS from Dell, even though it was the same as the version that I was already running, and now everything seems to be working. The battery is charging and no power supply warning on startup.

More on Ion Batteries

Those same attributes make lithium ion dangerous. The amount of energy needed to keep a notebook as warm as toast for four hours will melt steel if it's expressed in a few seconds -- and a damaged Li-ion battery can dump power that fast. The damage can be external, as when an impact deforms the case, or it can be due to manufacturing defects. Many dangerous situations are avoided by the internal geometry of the cells and smart support electronics -- there's far more to modern battery design than you may think.

The most impressive part of lithium ion batteries isn't that they can go catastrophically wrong, but that they only do so rarely -- one or two times per million units per year. Here's what's inside the case, keeping you safe and your notebook running.

Temperature sensors
When assembled, these two arms run alongside two of the cells in the battery stack (see inset, above), monitoring the overall pack temperature. If this reaches a high level for whatever reason, the electronics isolates the batteries from charging or discharging. The notebook may also have temperature sensors in the battery compartment, feeding its own safety systems.

Lithium ion cell
One of eight in the example above, this contains about six watt-hours of energy. That translates to two kilowatts over ten seconds, a rate of discharge that's theoretically possible under some fault conditions. Excessive heating in one cell can cause the failure of the next, and so on, an avalanche effect that leads to the energetic destruction of the entire pack.

Voltage converter/regulator circuit
This maintains safe levels of voltage and current during charging and discharging. Although it's designed to spot dangerous conditions and prevent cell damage by shutting down the battery pack, component faults here can actually increase the risk of catastrophic failure.

Notebook connector
This is shrouded and designed to minimise the risk of short circuits when the battery pack is separate from the main equipment. Even if the plastic shroud is damaged, the circuitry inside the pack should detect short circuit conditions and protect the cells from rapid discharge.

Voltage tap
Most consumer equipment treats a stack of cells as a single battery, but this can be dangerous in lithium ion. As the cells age, some will lose capacity faster than others -- and if one cell becomes flat before the others, it can actually start to charge in reverse, which is a highly dangerous condition. The internal circuitry of the battery pack thus has to monitor cells separately and shut down the whole pack if one cell is too far out of balance.

Battery charge state monitor
Many lithium ion packs have a built-in meter consisting of a row of LEDs and a button. To accurately report the state of charge, the pack electronics has to keep a record of the current in and out of the cell, as well as a model of its behaviour. This can become more inaccurate over time; more modern cells will recalibrate themselves.

More information about battery control technology can be found at the industry forum for the Smart Battery System specification

Technologiy is still limited by what little we know about physics and still have to opperate within the constraints of natural laws of electro/thermal dynamics. Read this article bellow it might shed some light.

Charging laptop computer batteries used to be easy in the good old days of Nickel Cadmium technology and lead acid cells. All you had to do was build a circuit that would adjust the voltage in such a way that the charging current did not exceed 50% of the laptop battery's milliAmp hour (mAh) capacity. A couple of hours later and presto - you had a charged laptop computer battery. A few milliAmps above or below the maximum capacity were easily tolerated, with only a slight degradation in the overall life of laptop computer batteries.

Today, Lithium Ion laptop computer batteries are the most advanced technology in terms of energy generated per pound. These laptop computer batteries are unfortunately very unforgiving, when it comes to charging. The charging current and voltage must follow very strict curves over the 180 minutes recommended for a full charging cycle. Lithium Ion laptop computer batteries will not tolerate lower levels of current like the car battery can when it is close to full charge. Instead, laptop computer batteries require a special circuit that will control that current and limit it as the laptop batteries approach a fully charged state.

For this reason, all laptop computer batteries are equipped with a rather sophisticated charging circuit inside the laptop battery that regulates the charge and discharge current and also communicates with the computer about remaining capacity. This communication occurs over a specific data bus that is tied to power management software installed on every system. (Many users are familiar with the related Control Panel application that estimates remaining battery life and controls settings that minimize power consumption.)

This same charging circuit has a temperature protection feature that ensures the laptop battery doesn't over-charge and over-heat. Some laptop computer batteries achieve this functionality via a thermal fuse that opens when the temperature exceeds 50-60 degrees Celsius. Other laptop battery designs use a thermistor (thermal sensitive resistor) that communicates the laptop battery temperature at all times to the charging circuit and stops the charging process in case of overheating. Temperature management is so important in Lithium Ion laptop computer batteries.that the newest laptop battery designs employ both methods and components.

An interesting fact regarding laptop computer batteries is that most of the laptop battery's charging takes place in the first 80 minutes of charging. This is the case in laptop computer batteries, despite the fact that a full charge takes generally 180 minutes. This is a little known fact that can save us time while waiting for that well-known amber light to turn into green.

If certain criteria is not met it could become dangerious to continue using a depleted Battery. It is NOT recomended to Discharge a Battery by shorting it out then put it in the freezer. These batteries can explode if improperly treated. i.e forced charged, discharged too quickly etc.

I have taken all the suggestions I could garner from this forum as well as several others to make an informed decision on what was wrong with my Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. It stopped charging while I was on a trip to Utah last month and stubbornly would not budge from the message "plugged in. Not charging". I tried a new A/C adaptor and a new battery. Neither worked. I had already experimented with removing 'extra' battery references in the Windows registry, uninstalling and reinstalling battery and A/C drivers, removing and replacing the A/C adaptor and battery and re-starting and leaving the battery out for deer season and pressing the 'ON" button to release bad spirits. Since my last resort would have been opening up the case and doing some  'engineering work' (I'm a chemist), I went to the Dell support site and began downloading and installing all the latest drivers that had anything to do with 'POWER" for the E1505 I also downloaded and installed the latest BIOS driver - even though my E1505 appeared to have the latest version already installed. My old E1505 is now charging again - with the old battery and old A/C adaptor.

Now, I have to admit, there may still be a loose connection (somewhere in my E1505 or this old chemist) that was responsible for the bad behavior of the old boy, but for the time being, the sucker is charging !:emotion-15:

I got a Rocketfish adapter for $79 and plugged it in and my battery is now charging. However, I would like to at least see if installing the latest BIOS driver might fix the problem as I think that my old adapter is ok and if downloading the newest bios works then I can take this new adapter back. My question is, can anyone give me easy to understand directions on how to install the newest bios driver. I see the driver on the Dell site but the directions are pretty complicated, can anyone explain it in lay terms...or dumb it up for me? I know software fairly well, but something like this leaves me a bit overwhelmed... would anyone be willing to help me? Also does anyone think I should try this or just leave well enough alone and stick with the new adapter??? Thank you to everyone for their input, you have been great.  :emotion-18:

Candidly, I do not think that installing the newest BIOS driver is going to have much effect.  However, in terms of the ease or difficulty of installing the BIOS, I would actually put the task more closer to the Easy column.  I actually posted a pretty good step-by-step on the installation in this same topic thread, but here it is again
for everyone's benefit. 

The most recent BIOS updates can be readily downloaded off the Dell website, under Drivers and Downloads.  The "flashing" process is even more simple than the download.  From Windows Explorer or using the Run command, you simply invoke the most recent update (I was shifting from the A12 update to the A16 release), and file self-executes. The application asks you if you want to upgrade your BIOS from ____ to ____, which you confirm by clicking OK (or Cancel).  The application the informs you that it will close all existing applications, restart the computer and flash the BIOS - and then requests a final OK click, before proceeding.  The rest was all transparent, with the BIOS taking just a little longer to process the first time during the Post-Test process.  Windows XP launched and loaded as usual, and as far as I can tell, all the prior BIOS/CMOS settings were all carried over successfully during the update. So mostly, unless the flashing process were inadvertently interrupted by a power failure at a critical moment (which only takes a few seconds as far as I could tell), everything should proceed without any problems.

Regardless if the new BIOS doesn't fix the battery charging problem, the newer BIOS is usually always a better bet than an older one.  Give it a try.

:^/ You mentioned two batteries.  Have you tried swapping them around?  If one is draining no matter which cavity it occupies, then it's the battery that has trouble, even if its indicator lights say otherwise.  On the other hand, if the battery in a given cavity drains no matter which battery is in there, then there's trouble with that cavity.  Either the leads that send power there, or the controller that sends power to those leads.

Well I (like so many others) had the same problem.  Laptop will work when plugged in, but remove the plug and it shuts off.  It doesn't charge the battery at all.  I get the red / orange / green light for the battery when it ti plugged in.  So last night after reading all the posts, I figured I'd try the easiest.  I took out the battery, opened the little compartment on the inside of the battery compartment, removed the smaller battery (actually looks like 3 hearing aid batteries shrink wrapped together), waited 15 seconds, reinstalled, set the date, and holy cow - - it worked.  I will try to update the BIOS, but not critical at this point.  Don't know how long the fix will last, but I'm happy for now.  I purchased a refurbished battery the first time this happened, think I may have wasted my money and that my old battery was still good!

Holy smokes.  Since I happen to be home on vacation this week, I caught this posting.  Well, this is certainly gratifying to hear that my suggested strategy of completely powering down the laptop may be the (or maybe just one) solution to this recurring battery recharging dilemma.  It's only just very strange that I only stumbled on it purely by accident.  Isn't that how somebody-or-other discovered penicillin also?  Okay, my discovery is clearly not in that category. 

Well, that's good news and I can report that I have not had a recurrence of that original problem since I effected my "fix" a good ways back.  I've watched the feedback from others on this posting and I continue to see folks default to the options of 1) buying a new battery or 2) buying a new A/C adapter, before first trying all of the non-monetary solutions proposed, including the "total power-down option".  Not sure why that is.  Maybe it's just human nature to assume that the solution can't be free, since disconnecting that lithium-ion battery is only fractionally harder than changing the batteries in your TV remote control.  Well, now that JCCUBS has reported a success using this approach, maybe others will give it a try now also.  Thanks for taking the time to provide the good feedback.

I want to try this?

removing the lithium ion battery?

but do not know how to open the compartment and do not want to break my machine by forcing it open

please could you let me know how it opens?

anyone?

thank you

Okay, you don't make mention of what kind of laptop you have, but as a general statement, I'm pretty sure nothing is going to get broken if you try the approach of removing the small reserve lithium battery that provides the power to maintain some of the CMOS/BIOS settings.  Basically, it's not much harder than changing the batteries on your TV remote, although maybe with a much smaller battery.

1. Power down your laptop
2. Remove the laptop battery (the big laptop battery)
3. Look for the small compartment along the inside edge of the battery compartment
4. Depress the small latch and open the little plastic cover
5. Extract the lithium battery pack from the inner compartment
6. Gently disconnect the battery pack from the wiring harness at the connector - it should pull apart easily
7. Let the unit sit for 10-15 minutes (although I suspect you could reconnect the battery immediately)
8. Reconnect the battery and return it to the compartment and secure the plastic cover
9. Reinstall the primary laptop battery
10. Power-up the laptop
11. Re-enter your date/time settings when prompted
12. Cross your fingers and check to see if the green battery charging light is now lit

I'm going to try to embed an image of the reserve lithium battery compartment on my Dell Latitude D600, as a reference.  Yours may or may not be similar.  Good luck and be sure to report back your results (whatever those turn out to be).

HI,

I AM HAVING THE SAME ISSUE ONLY MINE IS A DELL XPS 1647...

CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHERE MY CMOS WOULD BE?

I NEED TO FIGURE OUT WHERE THIS IS TO TELL IF I WAS SOLD A BAD BATTERY OR NOT...THX

SORRY FOR THE CAPS...ON A PHONE AND CANT TELL HOW TO TAKE THEM OFF

OK, I think there may be two, or maybe three questions lurking in this posting.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can answer any of them.  First, I don't have a clue regarding the CMOS battery configuration on a Dell XPS 1647.  Likewise, I'm not sure if, or for that matter even how any of this will tell you if you were sold a bad battery, or not.  Maybe others can provide an answer to the at least the first part of your question (where's the CMOS battery).  Good luck.