SSD & Battery Upgrade Issues - XPS 15 9550

Question

I am having problems with an upgrade I did with my laptop. Here's what I started with:

XPS 15 9550 w/

1. Memory - DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 8GB, 2133, 2RX8, 4G, DDR4, S

2. Hard Drive - SSDR, 256G, P34, 80S3, HYNIX, PC300

3. Battery - BATTERY, PRIMARY, 84WHR, 6C, LITHIUM, SIMPLO

And I have upgraded it w/

1. Memory - 2-16GB DDR4-2400 SODIMM 1.2V

2. Hard Drive - in addition to the original 256G SSD that it came with I added a Crucial MX500 2TB 2.5 SSD

3. Battery - to make room for the 2.5 SSD I downgraded my battery from the 84WHR to a 56WHR, Lithium, 11.4V

Everything went fine eventually - had to order an adapter for the 2.5 SSD which I didn't realize didn't come with the drive. But I got everything installed and the computer recognized it. The laptop is so much faster and I can access the 2TB drive. The problem is with the battery. I can see that the battery is there and it is fully charged but the laptop will not start up unless it is plugged in and if I unplug the laptop, it then shuts down in about 3-5 minutes. When it starts without being plugged in, It will boot to the Dell logo and then shut down. I've tried updating drivers, uninstalling and reinstalling drivers. I've run checks via the laptop and Dell website. All the tests come back saying everything is alright except it still shuts down.

Are there changes that need to be made in the BIOS or somewhere else? Any assistance that can be given would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

JOcean · Answer

If you access System diagnostics, is the battery health listed correctly? Did you install a genuine Dell battery? Though the battery is fully charged, the system acts as if the battery is bad. Have you tried plugging in the original battery (kind of tricky with the SSD in place) just to do a test as to whether the system will boot without the adapter? I realize you cannot screw is down but you should be able to plug it in just to test. My point is if it does boot, it would look to be a battery issue.

Kind of a catch 22 here. If the system is under warranty the Dell techs would need the system put back to the way it was before the upgrades. And by doing that the problem would probably not exist anymore. Of course if the same problem exists then it starts to look like a problem with the motherboard.

Techgee · Answer

Batteries have a chip in them and it seems laptops (at very least Dell's) don't always easily detect a different battery, but can just recognize that the previous battery is no longer there and something is wrong.

From what I understand the laptop needs to redetect/re-sense the battery and reset the laptop's stored battery "model number". General procedure, at least with Dell's, is to boot the laptop once with no battery connected. Seems this clears the laptop's battery "model number" and tells the laptop that it will need to try to detect/sense a battery on next boot. Examples of detailed procedure elsewhere here and here.

What I don't know is if this applies to the Dell XPS 15 9550...

XPS

SSD & Battery Upgrade Issues - XPS 15 9550

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