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March 13th, 2006 21:00
C600 Battery Will Not Charge
The battery of my Dell C600 Laptop will not charge, but I can't figure out if the problem is the battery itself, the motherboard, or something else.
I got the laptop off Ebay about a week ago. When it arrived the battery had full power, and the laptop was able to work without being plugged in. After having it plugged in and on my desk for about a week, I decided to unplug it and run off of the battery. After unplugging it, it turned off immediately, at which point I began my investigation. Here's some of the information I've uncovered about my problem so far...
The BIOS lists the charge at 0%, with a Battery Status of "Charging", although it never goes above 0% no matter how long I leave it on, and no matter what the conditions are (whether it be fully booted, in the BIOS, or just turned off but still plugged in).
When I remove the battery from the battery bay, the battery status changes to "Not Installed" as expected. When I put the battery back in, it switched back to "Charging", and the battery light turns green for about 10 seconds before turning off again. The battery status light is always off except for when I plug the battery back in, or I boot the computer up, at which point it turns green and then goes off about 10 seconds later like usual. It has never turned red or amber.
The battery is recognized in both the battery bay and the other general-purpose bay, and the symptoms are the same regardless of which bay it is in.
When I remove the battery and hold down the button, after holding it down for about 5 seconds a single green light turns on once and quickly turns off again, and won't blink any more than that once unless I release and press the button again. I haven't been able to tell from reading the forums if when the battery operates normally the lights stay on as long as you hold it, or if they flash once and then stay off like mine appears to do. I've never seen any combination of amber or red lights.
When this problem started my bios was version A21, but I flashed it to A23 in an attempt to fix the problem, which resulted in no noticeable change. I had to use the /forceit option on the FlashBIOS Boot CD to get it to work, as it would otherwise give me a "Battery Not Installed" error (although as previously stated the bios seems to recognize that the battery is installed).
The AC adapter works fine as far as I can tell, and always has its green light on when it is plugged in. The laptop works perfectly normally when it is plugged in.
I formatted the Windows 2000 that was originally on this computer when I bought it, and have installed Gentoo Linux in its place. I don't think this should really be the problem however, since it is a lower-level issue, and I had used the laptop without being plugged in even after installing Linux.
The laptop is almost certainly not under warranty now, so I if I do have to replace a part I'd rather know which one it is before-hand instead of having to buy a battery and find out it was the motherboard or vice versa.
Sorry if this post got a little long. I just thought I should include as much revelant information about the problem as I currently know.
Thanks for any help
I got the laptop off Ebay about a week ago. When it arrived the battery had full power, and the laptop was able to work without being plugged in. After having it plugged in and on my desk for about a week, I decided to unplug it and run off of the battery. After unplugging it, it turned off immediately, at which point I began my investigation. Here's some of the information I've uncovered about my problem so far...
The BIOS lists the charge at 0%, with a Battery Status of "Charging", although it never goes above 0% no matter how long I leave it on, and no matter what the conditions are (whether it be fully booted, in the BIOS, or just turned off but still plugged in).
When I remove the battery from the battery bay, the battery status changes to "Not Installed" as expected. When I put the battery back in, it switched back to "Charging", and the battery light turns green for about 10 seconds before turning off again. The battery status light is always off except for when I plug the battery back in, or I boot the computer up, at which point it turns green and then goes off about 10 seconds later like usual. It has never turned red or amber.
The battery is recognized in both the battery bay and the other general-purpose bay, and the symptoms are the same regardless of which bay it is in.
When I remove the battery and hold down the button, after holding it down for about 5 seconds a single green light turns on once and quickly turns off again, and won't blink any more than that once unless I release and press the button again. I haven't been able to tell from reading the forums if when the battery operates normally the lights stay on as long as you hold it, or if they flash once and then stay off like mine appears to do. I've never seen any combination of amber or red lights.
When this problem started my bios was version A21, but I flashed it to A23 in an attempt to fix the problem, which resulted in no noticeable change. I had to use the /forceit option on the FlashBIOS Boot CD to get it to work, as it would otherwise give me a "Battery Not Installed" error (although as previously stated the bios seems to recognize that the battery is installed).
The AC adapter works fine as far as I can tell, and always has its green light on when it is plugged in. The laptop works perfectly normally when it is plugged in.
I formatted the Windows 2000 that was originally on this computer when I bought it, and have installed Gentoo Linux in its place. I don't think this should really be the problem however, since it is a lower-level issue, and I had used the laptop without being plugged in even after installing Linux.
The laptop is almost certainly not under warranty now, so I if I do have to replace a part I'd rather know which one it is before-hand instead of having to buy a battery and find out it was the motherboard or vice versa.
Sorry if this post got a little long. I just thought I should include as much revelant information about the problem as I currently know.
Thanks for any help
