17 R3, plugged in, not charging, #2

Try the reset again. Disconnect the battery and unplug the adapter then press and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Now reconnect everything and try again. Also restart the system and at the Alienware logo start tapping F2. In the BIOS check the battery health and to see that the adapter is properly detected.

I appreciate your response. I did what you said. In the BIOS, AC adapter detected as 180W and Battery health as the battery is performing normally. But still plugged in, not charging. Now stopped at 41%.

If  I unplug the adapter & plug it back, it shows charging for few seconds and then stops. I can not consider the AC adapter is bad because I used it without the battery.

Only 3 options I can think of then. Either the DC jack on the system is bad (loose pin, poor connection on the adapter) or a problem on the charging circuit on the motherboard, or a defective battery. Examine the jack..do you see any problems like a loose or missing pin?

Check the DC port. Don't see anything loose. If it is bad, would it still show the correct Watt reading in the BIOS?

I tried putting a new DC jack, still doing the same thing. If it's the charging circuit, what is the fix for that?

Problem solved. It was actually the replacement battery that I bought was causing the issue. Luckily, the seller sent me a replacement. I tried that one and it worked like a charm. Started charging to 100% without any issue. 

I have the same problem previously, and i fixed it twice and after couple of months it occurred again it reached 28% and stopped charging. Note that i am using 240 watt adapter.i tried to play game without battery with only ac adapter the laptop turned off after a while. In addition, Some people they said that i should use 330 watt i will try and feedback to you. This is very bad because i sent the laptop to dell to fix it but they did not do it well.

What did Dell do to "Fix" it?  I also am having the same issue. First it was stuck at a max charge of 96% then 86%, 36% now stuck at 40%. I plug it in and it charges for a few moments and then stops. The laptop is accepting power from the charger but is not charging the battery past a specific point. I have update BIOS, etc. Battery Health is Normal and nothing appears to be loose at the charging port.

I've had a few problems with this in the past, I bought a new charger right after it went out of warranty with no change.  I've bought a dc cable from parts-people to repair this, and another from amazon, both worked for maybe 6 months or so, then the same issue.  It seems everyone is now running out of stock of the dc cables and I'm having the problem again.  Really, this thing is such a boat anchor and not friendly for travel at all that I mostly leave it at home and am considering trying to find a way to hard-wire the charger since I can't find the dc cables outside of ebay any more.

Sometimes if the battery completely discharges, you can force it to start charging again when the battery is completely dead by holding power for 30 seconds.  Pulling the battery and pressing power button for 30 seconds sometimes works.  Also, using the "Desktop mode battery charge" for me has worked maybe twice out of the 50 times I've tried it, so... your mileage may vary there.  It's at least the least invasive thing you can do as an attempt.  I see a lot of people having the same issue in a lot of forums, reddit, etc... but no one ever seems to have the same solution.  Good luck in finding something permanent-ish, but the dc cable changes has worked for me for a number of months before it goes bad again.

Since this message traffic is the first Google link to come up when encountering this problem, I wanted to take the time to share what I learned and maybe help out the next person.  This is a software issue, at least in my case.  I had the same symptoms, and the biggest indicator it was not the battery or the power supply was that the laptop runs fine off the power supply, and if it can run off the power supply it can certainly charge the battery.  The battery will almost always start showing problems before a failure, such as a dramatically shortened life or slow charging before it just suddenly doesn't work anymore.  In my case, one day it was fine, and the next day it would indicate charging but would never actually charge.  I bought the recommended DC Battery cable and prepared to do major surgery to replace a piece of wire that almost can't go bad.  If the connector isn't visibly broken, it probably didn't suffer a catastrophic failure that allows enough current into the machine for it to run but not charge the battery.  That battery cable fix is commonly recommended and makes no sense.  So to prep to change it as I had no other recourse than to start doing fixes I didn't think would work, I installed a larger capacity M.2 drive, and used Acronis to clone my c: drive to it.  I physically swapped out the old c:, and Acronis had done a great job of moving everything over to the new drive and it booted just fine.  In this way, I have a backup of the old drive should anything bad happen during the battery cable surgery.  Boom - fixed.  Suddenly the battery was charging just like when it was new.  Also, the battery went from 4% despite being plugged in for a week and never charging to 100% in an instant, which indicates it was actually fine all along and the indications were false.  So this was, in my case, definitely software related somehow.  I don't know how cloning the drive and changing it could have fixed the issue, but I put this here as a clue of where to focus.  Try doing some software updates, particularly from Dell, perhaps a Windows restore to a point before the issue showed up or something like that.  Whatever might cause the subroutine monitoring the battery power to reset or re calibrate itself.  Best of luck, and I hope this helps someone down the road.  Live long and prosper!

Hi.

I have similar issue, unsolved. My Dell Alienware 17 R3. First the power supply died, LED was off, i worked from battery. Then tried to use other dell psu with less wattage, tried two, and two aftermarker psu with 180W and 240W. All of them allow me to work, but the battery is at 0% and not charging. Not when off, not when on. Diagnostic shows all fine. Battery test passes. Battery health shows 86%, voltage 12194mV, current flow 0mA, charging state idle.

I disconnected the battery and adapter to drain the system. Also pressed power button for 30s. All does not solve.

Any ideas?

Yep, not very clear why, but the replacement adapter is detected as 255W, starts charging for a second and then stopps. Clear visible in the pre boot diagnostics. Thank You, i send the adapter back and purchased an original.