Dell XPS M1530's battery won't charge, plugged in.

hey can u post a screenshot of the bios battery info page ......plz......i really need to check on that

Thank u

From the sound of your message, the battery is dead.

I am guessing your battery is probably just past the one year warranty?  My battery is doing essentially the same thing at only 15 months old.  I think Dell purchased a batch of cheap batteries that were engineered to fail outside of the warranty.  The whole "battery life depends on your usage" argument just doesn't wash.  I have used my XPS in the same ways as my wife has used her Inspiron and her battery lasted four years.  This seems to be a widespread problem for XPS owners- funny, considering this is supposed to be one of the high end Dell laptops.  I think Dell owes all of us new batteries.  If they meant to sell us a one year battery, then they should have said so when I was configuring my laptop for purchase.  I feel taken advantage of as a consumer.  Dell has lost my business until they rectify this.

It is the motherboard. there are hundreds experiencing the same problem including myself. Updating BIOS, changing adaptors, battery...nothing. All solutions involved the changeout of the motherboard. Dell will not recall this either even though there is a true problem/defect. Should have bought the warranty but after owning over 20 PCs over the past 15 years, I never experienced a failure issue like this, especially from an apparent high quality laptop.

So if you don't have the extended warranty...you are unfortunately out of luck...$500 for the board. Lesson learned!

From what I have found, Dell has a defective charger/software that is rather common.  This should get fixed under warrantee.  Contact Dell service.

Hi Jerry, No did not get it replaced and yes it was expensive (that was a local quote), but what can you do, right? It is a huge problem though, Dell should own up to it though since there are so many people out there looking for solutions. My bad for not buying the ext warranty, but this is suppose to be a higher end product. (I have not had this problem with my Office's $299 eMachines!!). Dell will hopefully make this right. At this time it is just a bad customer experience.

Count me in the club,

Last week my 1530 decided it could no longer charge the battery. The charger is good and (so far) it runs fine plugged in. Battery info says "2%, not charging".

BIOS is up to date and no issues with the charger.

Got the standard answer from Dell Support: 12 months on batteries. Well, excuse ME. My laptop is 16 months old and I paid extra for the 85w battery.

 No way I'm paying $180 for new battery.

Is it really possible this is a motherboard issue? If so, those with an extended warranty should be able to get help.

Has anyone had their motherboard replaced under warranty for this reason, and did it cure the problem?

Lance

Hello Lance:

We have the same problem and replacing the motherboard doesn't work.   Did you try a new battery?

I purchased, for my son, a Dell XPS M1530 laptop last June (got it in July 2008) for his high school graduation.  In mid April of this year he started having the same problem. His battery would not charge and the laptop would only stay on if it was plugged in via the AC adaptor.  We called Dell Tech Support. 

First Dell sent a new AC Adaptor.  Didn't work. 

Next on April 30th they sent an on-site technician who replaced the motherboard and AC adaptor.  Works for 3 days.  Then not working on May 3.   Many, many more calls to Dell Support.  Finally Dell Support wants my son to send the laptop to the Dell Depot.  He does not want to send the laptop.  He loves his laptop and did not want to be without a computer.  After much bugging by me he does send it to the Depot in late August.

We got the laptop back last week, Sept. 9th and it still had the same problem.   Called Dell again and arranged at last resort for another on-site technician.  This morning the on-site technician replaced the motherboard, again.  Still same problem.   The on-site technicians never tried new batteries as they don't carry them.  Who knows what was done at the Depot?

The battery is now dead and Dell will do nothing further, since the battery is now out of warranty.  According to them there is nothing else they can or will replace.  The Tech support supervisor was rude, unhelpful and lied about when this problem started (August) to claim out of warranty.  Truly, this is terrible customer service.   I asked for a "System Exchange" and was told no.   I don't fall within the "Guidelines" and I was not going to be told what these "Guidelines" were.  What?

I have emailed and left a message for the Dell Consumer Products President in hopes to resolve this issue.    Minimally I think Dell should send us a new battery so we can see if that works.  I am not holding my breath that anything will happen.

Any ideas would be most appreciated.

Cindy G.

Hi CIndy,

You have the patience of Job!

I have gave up getting any help from Dell. I am tethered to a power cord, but that beats essentially $10 per month for replacement batteries ($180 and last 18 months).

Thanks for the info that replacing the motherboard did nothing for your problem. I will not pursue that avenue either...

Good Luck!

Lance

Thanks!  Other than feeling like Job sometimes, I don't know if I have the patience.

The worst part was feeling punished by the Dell HW Supervisor for threatening escalation to corporate.   He was adamant that they would do nothing. 

Escalation worked though (my email and call to the Dell president).  

I got a call today from Dell and they setup a call with my son and I for tomorrow to work through the problem.    They would have helped today but their systems are being upgraded and they can't research how many times we've called.  :emotion-4:

I'm happy to know going to the top still does wonders.  I'll let you know what happens.  I have hope.

:emotion-15:

Hi

Have exactly the same problem. Bought my XPS 1530 last year in July and have been pretty satisfied with it till now. About a 2 month ago my laptop suddenly stopped working and shut down it self saying battery was low which left me surprised since i though it was charged fully but I explained to myself i probably didn't plug the cord in so I accidentally drained him and for a while I didn't give much thought to it(later to be proven a critical mistake cause the battery warranty was still valid ). After that "incident"  approximately about a week or 10 days later similar incident happened except I noticed that battery wasn't charging. At this point I started looking checking connectors, recent updates that might messed up charring proces but found out that everything was ok . Few days after this in windows and during system start up there was a message that laptop can't recognize the battery, so I was sure then that I must bring my laptop to the Dell service where I bought it which I decided even when the first problem occured but didn't do it since wasn't sure if there was a real problem or just a minor "glich" plus the Dell official reseller is in place where I usually live as a student which is in another city and I was on a "summer break"(I'm a student btw). So all confident in my 3 year DELL warranty I entered Dell service only to 1) Find out that my battery is dead  2) That I'm cause of the problem since I've used it to much as desktop replacement  and didn't use it in unplugged state enough even though this laptop is DTR    3) Most important, that my warranty expired about a month ago ( when the first problem occurred ) because 3 year warranty doesn't apply on batteries. So basically I have 2 choices now , first one is to buy a new battery from dell reseller or on ebay or similar sites and hope that next one will last more then a year or have a laptop that dies as soon as I unplug it from the charger.
        Hope I didn't bore someone till death with my experience with dell battery problems.

Wanna thank all people that posted here and made aware someone(at least other xps owners or owners to be) of this apparently often occurring problem with Dell Xps laptops.
Thx Cindy for posting your experience with "battery situation" please post if you were able to resolve the situation in any way
p.s- hope I didn't make to many grammar and syntax mistakes and made my "post" unreadable.
p.s2- if anyone has bought xps battery from one of the ebay sellers please send me message and tell me your experience

I bought a replacement  9-cell Battery from ebay ( http://shop.ebay.com/cbk_usa_electronics/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=) for $70 back in January.  I'd buy from them again, (something tells me i'll have to in a few more months) I haven't had any problems with it.  I'm running on battery now and I get about 3.5 hours.  The capacity isn't quite what the original battery was ( 86,580 original vs. 71,280 from ebay. I'm not sure on the units, mAh?)  The original battery went from 85,000 to useless in 9 months.  I asked for a replacement but my warranty was up since this computer was sent as a replacement for my Inspiron 6000 which went up in smoke.   Since Jan '09 the replacement still holds 69,000.  To me its obvious that somebody designed these batteries to fail in about a year or less.  

Specs:
Dell XPS M1530
Core 2 Duo T7250 @2.0 Ghz 
4 GB Ram
64 Bit Windows 7 Pro
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 

I also have a Dell XPS M1530 and the same thing happened to my laptop regarding battery. I just got off the phone with Dell and had to dish out 209.00 for a new battery. My laptop is almost 2 yrs old and had no indication that the battery was "dying". No problems then all of a sudden today my laptop "dies" after  I unplug it and I was 100% sure it was fully charged. 

Having to buy a new battery every 1-2 years is ridiculous!! I feel robbed.

Update on Dell battery problem:  Cindy G, son's laptop

Since escalating to the Dell Consumer Products Pres, we were contacted by a very, very good Dell Technical Support rep who agreed to send out a new battery via on-site Technician.

We got the appointment setup, the tech came and replaced the battery and voila - it now works.  And it still works over a week later.  Woo hoo!

Note:  We did have the motherboard replaced(at least 3x) and Dell did replace the battery.

Hope this helps all!

Cindy G.