m15 R5, suddenly charging extremely slowly

Question

A few days ago my laptop started charging extremely slowly. It may take several hours or longer to charge from almost empty to full. It started after the laptop drained its battery down to 6% overnight. I used a kill-a-watt to measure the energy that the AC adapter was pulling and when the laptop was shut down or asleep it only pulled a couple watts despite the battery being almost empty. When the laptop is running it draws however much power it needs from the adapter but doesn't use it for charging since the battery still takes several hours to charge. I have tried updating the drivers for the AC adapter and the battery and re installed the battery drivers. I have installed all available updates and restarted the computer numerous times. I also installed the dell power manager program and changed the charge settings, but the laptop still only charges at a couple watts. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Update=Resolved-I'm not sure why, but the battery started charging normally again.

DELL-Cares · Answer

We tried reaching you on a private message asking for the Service Tag number to ascertain the warranty but did not receive a response. Please feel free to reply to the private message whenever you are available.

DELL-Jesse L · Answer

Uraniumhexoflorite,

• Are you using an original Dell adapter?
• Could you try using an alternate charger if available?

Could you also check the AC adapter and battery status in the BIOS and share an image? You can watch a video here for instructions: https://dell.to/33SMMjF

Also, please run the diagnostics on the system to check for any battery/hardware issues. You can watch a video here for instructions: https://dell.to/3nZVSSu. Let me know if you get any errors and share images.

If there were no errors during diagnostics, let's drain the residual power within the system. Here is a video guide: https://dell.to/3rQWkDH

If the issue persists, help me with a battery report by following https://dell.to/35f51Qw. You can upload the battery report to any cloud sharing drives and send me the link here to review it further.

Download and install the latest BIOS update regardless of whether or not you already have the BIOS up to date. You can follow these steps.

If the issue persists, please check the battery status on BIOS. To do this, restart your system and start tapping F2 during the start up process to access BIOS. Move to the advanced tab and check the battery health there.

NForest413 · Answer

I just bought my Alienware laptop from Best Buy maybe two weeks ago. And today I noticed it was dead.(haven’t used it in a week). So I put it on the charger like at 4pm. It’s now 934pm and it only charged the laptop til 29%. Spending 1500 dollars on this 2000 dollar laptop. This is ridiculous. I just turned it off and I’m going to see how it is in the morning. Or else I need to return this before I can’t.

Beatboxxeternal · Answer

Posting here for visibility. I had a similar issue with one that came through (I sell gaming laptops.) Bought with dead battery, replaced battery. Ran off battery fine but either didn't charge or charged very slowly. Ran HWinfo64, opened sensors, and looked at charge rate. No charge, or up to 2mwh charging. It liked being at 0. I opened laptop and noticed heat shield was disintegrating... laptop had overheating issue that was fixed with thermal paste, but I suspected overheating had damaged DC cable (which runs directly over heat shield.)

Step 1: unplugged battery.

step 2: unplugged and massaged dc cable.

step 3: reassembled and tested

Like a bad starter in a car, the massaging of the dc cable brought the cable back to life temporarily, and I started getting full charge rate. Noticed rate was dropping. Unplugged ac adapter, replugged, and charge rate went to 0.

Replaced DC cable. Charge rate was fixed.

Hope this helps for future techs/enthusiasts.

Alienware

m15 R5, suddenly charging extremely slowly

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