Article Summary: How to charge external USB devices (i.e. cellular phones, portable music players, etc.) using power from the battery on a Dell laptop
Only the USB connectors with either a lightning bolt icon, or a battery icon as seen in the images below, can be used.
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(Fig.1 USB PowerShare lightning bolt Icon) | (Fig.2 USB PowerShare battery Icon) |
This functionality is enabled in the system setup under the On Board Devices heading. You can select how much of the battery's charge can be used (pictured below). If you set the USB PowerShare to 25%, the external device is allowed to charge until the laptop battery reaches 25% of full capacity.
(e.g. 75% of the portable's battery charge is used up).
(Fig.3 USB PowerShare BIOS Screen)
When this option is set to Disabled, the USB PowerShare feature will be turned off and devices attached to the USB PowerShare port will not be charged when the system is in a low power state. Selecting any of the other settings enables the feature and specifies the system battery capacity at which charging of a USB device attached to the USB PowerShare port will be terminated.
Also check that the USB configuration options are enabled and ticked. (depending on the model of system and the BIOS revision should look like the screen below)
(Fig.4 BIOS USB Configuration screen image)
Browse to the Dell USB Diagnostics page and follow the prompts, to help if you have any issues with USB ports.
Article ID: SLN155147
Last Date Modified: 03/07/2018 08:29 AM
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