The battery light on my Dell Latitude E4310 began blinking, today, seemingly out of nowhere. As far as I can tell, it's blinking Amber 3 or 4 times before going to blue. Moreover, when I check my taskbar indicators, it's reading "No battery detected."

I operate almost exclusively with it plugged in, so I've never really had a problem starting it or anything. I had a slight accident years ago when the cord was stepped on and very slightly bent where the adapted plugs into the computer. But after having ordered another adapted, this never bothered me again. Maybe about two weeks ago the laptop had a short fall. But other than that, I'm not sure what could be happening.

Anyone have any idea of what's going on? While I can operate it without the battery, the issue is whenever there is a bit of weakness in the adapted outlet, the entire computer shuts down in whatever I'm in the middle of doing. In the past, a slight disconnect from moving the computer plugged in would be picked up by the battery. So this is definitely an issue I envision becoming a problem if I don't solve it.

I should note that I've removed the battery, let all residual power out of the system, and then restarted the computer. I've monkeyed around with the power adapter and switched it out to an older one to see if anything changed. It's just weird it's not recognizing that a battery is present when it's attached unless it's just totally gone bad all at once.