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AC Adapter Cannot Be Determined
I have an Inspiron 5758 (Win 10, original Dell AC adapter, 45W, no appearance of damage on male or female end, though truth be told, those are very small/hard to see well). In the past when I've unplugged my laptop, if I don't plug it in almost immediately again, but run the battery a for a little while, when I plug the AC adapter back in, I get the old "plugged in, not charging" indicator in my taskbar. In the past when this has occurred I've followed various temporary solutions to get it return to "plugged in, charging," esp. the ubiquitous 12 step method of turning off/unplugging/removing battery/uninstall in Device manager/etc... Sometime just unplugging and plugging back in repetitively works.
But now, none of that works. After draining a battery to about 25%, I plugged it back in, and got a "plugged in, charging" indicator for about 20 seconds and then a reversion to "plugged in, not charging."
In addition, I get the following message upon start up, "Alert! The AC power adapter cannot be determined,. The battery may not charge. They system will adjust...Note: This warning can be disabled in BIOS setup" (which I did after lots of searching how to but that doesn't make a *** bit of difference)
I've read countless community forum posts and followed all Dell tech suggestions about problems w/, AC adapters, have run diagnostics, updated my BIOS, etc. till I'm blue in the face. I have taken out the battery and the adapter runs the laptop so I don't think it could be the adapter. BIOS and Dell Power Management (Lite) tell me my battery is in excellent health. I understand it may be a damaged DC jack or motherboard or an alien mothership. I have suggestions about using a metal paper clip between the adapter end and the jack to do something to the power blah blah which I did not perform. I'm am going crazy trying to solve this problem, which seems to be as unsolvable as the riddle of the Spinx.
Not felling very "Ho, Ho" atm. If anybody can give me/the universe a definitely solution, I will sent them a X-mas fruit basket.
ejn63
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December 24th, 2017 03:00
It isn't clear if you've tried to solve the problem, but here's how you proceed:
Replace the adapter with a new OEM Dell AC adapter. If that doesn't solve the problem, replace the DC jack:
www.parts-people.com/index.php
And if that doesn't get the adapter recognized, replace the mainboard.
Arisbe
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December 24th, 2017 07:00
Thanks for the quick reply, minus the critique that I'v haven't "tried to solve the problem," as that does not compute (pun intended)
Anyway, riddle me this: if it is a hardware problem (AC adapter, DC jack, motherboard), then how is it the laptop run when I remove the battery?
ejn63
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December 24th, 2017 10:00
It is a hardware problem - and it's not solvable without parts replacement (and anything short of replacing the adapter, DC jack or mainboard won't solve the problem).
You may get by with an adapter or jack replacement - in most cases, one or both parts is faulty, meaning the center pin doesn't complete the circuit necessary for the AC adapter to be recognized (which must be complete for the battery to charge - but NOT to power the system). If replacing the adapter doesn't solve it, the jack is next -- and if that doesn't get the adapter recognized, the problem is a faulty charge circuit on the mainboard, which cannot be solved short of a mainboard replacement.