Dell Latitude E5440 sometimes starts by itself if I remove AC power soon after shutdown

Sorry, my script is not using "shutdown -P now", it's using "poweroff" (/usr/bin/poweroff).

It shouldn't matter, but just for completeness' sake in case someone at Dell tries to reproduce it.

Hi, 

Please try with another known good adapter and also update the BIOS to the latest from http://dell.to/1JYmzub and let me know the status.

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm already running BIOS A11, which is the latest one (before A11 the laptop suffered from this problem, so I needed the upgrade). So the BIOS version is not the issue.

I did try a BIOS "reset to defaults" a few hours ago and it remains to be seen if that helps at all.

I don't have another adapter - do you mean I should request another adapter from Dell? My laptop is under warranty, I bought it last August.

In fact, Linux seems to be irrelevant to the issue. My laptop is dual-boot with Windows 7, and I just reproduced the issue after shutting down Windows.

My AC adapter says: Model no.: HA65NM130. It's a 65W adapter made in China.

The key to reproduce the issue seems to be: shut the laptop down, wait for at least 5 seconds but not as much as a minute, then just unplug the adapter. The laptop will then start right up. You might need to try this a few times, but I find that it doesn't take more than 5 tries before it happens.

I find these issues (the stuck key fixed by A11 roughly a year after the affected models hit the market, and the laptop basically starting back up by itself (which is arguably a fire hazard, if I leave the house knowing I've unplugged all devices) unacceptable for a business grade laptop, which is what Dell is selling the Latitude series as.

The BIOS "reset to defaults" did not work - I've just managed to reproduce the issue.

It happened when shutting down the laptop with both "poweroff" and "systemctl poweroff".

So, to restate it, I do have the latest BIOS, with mostly default settings (I have AHCI set for the hard drive, and the NIC is just "enabled" - not "enabled with PXE", after resetting the BIOS to default settings).

If there's a problem with the BIOS, then it exists in the latest version as well.

Hi,

Apologies for the inconvenience. As far as I know the BIOS A10 released in January 2015 should fix the issue with system powering on when adapter is disconnected. 

This issue only occurs when battery status is "Idle". However it does not occur when battery status is "Charging".

I would request you to downgrade the BIOS from A11 to A10 and let me if would face the same issue and also the issue with the keyboard. 

Thank you, 

The keyboard issue exists with A10. I already knew that, as I've had A10 run on the laptop for about a month, from the first day it was released until the first day A11 has been released (yes, the stuck key had bugged me so much that I kept checking the BIOS release page almost daily - I would lose a lot of text whenever Backspace got stuck, emails when Del got stuck in Thunderbird, and so on).

But I did downgrade to A10 briefly today to check the power issue. I did try about 15 stops with the AC adapter unplugged at various times between ~5 seconds after shutdown to ~45 seconds, with both Linux and Windows and I could not reproduce the issue.

So, unless it's just been dumb luck, it would seem that A10 fixed the issue but A11 lost it again - perhaps the BIOS developers used different branches for the fixes and forgot to merge them before the release?

I've come back to A11 now, I can't really use the laptop with the key stuck problem so A10 is not really a choice for me. I type a lot.

I can also confirm that as far as I can tell this has always happened when the battery was 100% full - I can't say for sure, but usually my laptop is plugged in whenever in use, so the battery status has probably always been Idle when the AC adapter was unplugged.

Have the BIOS developers identified the issue? Will A12 fix it? Is there a timeframe for the fix?

Hi,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am sorry that you are facing different issues with different BIOS versions. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a time frame on when the next BIOS would be released. Request you to check our support site periodically for the updates. I will surely notify our concerned team relating to the issues with different BIOS versions (A10 & A11) that would help them on further BIOS versions. 

Hello again,

unfortunately it turns out that both BIOS versions have this problem - A10 and A11. I've tried A10 again, and this time the computer turned itself back on again on the second attempt - battery fully charged, computer plugged in, shut down the computer, waited for about a minute then pulled the plug and it booted right up.

So unfortunately neither BIOS solves the problem. I'll go back to A11 now, at least that one doesn't also have the key problem.

Does this mean I have a hardware problem? Should I contact Dell warranty? Or have the BIOS developers managed to reproduce the issue at Dell?

The AC adapter seems fine on its own - I've pulled the battery out and left the lapton on AC power only and I've noticed no problems so far. It also seems to charge the battery without any issues, the computer knows when it's being put in or pulled out (when the battery is installed, of course), etc.

I've installed A12 (released a few days ago), and today it happened again: when unplugging the laptop it started up again by itself. A12 (the latest BIOS) does NOT solve the problem.

I'll give it a few more months, maybe a new BIOS will be released that will fix the issue, and if it's not fixed by then, I'll escalate the problem directly to Dell warranty.

I did run Dell diagnostics (via F12 at startup) and every test passed.