Dell Latitude D620 Battery Not Recognized or Charging

I have a Latitude D620 that is about 5 years old. Lately I noticed that when I unplug the power cord the power meter indicates that the laptop is still on AC power when it is not. The battery, which is new, is not recognized at all by the computer. I have 2 ac power packs and tried them both with the same results. When I unplug the ac cord the battery light on the bottom right side of my monitor, turns from green to orange. After a couple of minutes the laptop then shuts off if the power cord is not plugged in. I searched other forums online and some of them indicated that I should update the bios. I updated the bios with latest version from the dell website using my service tag number. After it was installed the laptop started up with no problem. However the issue with the battery and power cord was not fixed. Think this may be a larger problem with the motherboard but not a computer guy so I really have no idea. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated

 

Are you using a genuine Dell battery? Try a known good D620/D630 battery.

 

Yes it is a Dell rechargeable lithium ion battery. When I hit the test button on the bottom I get all green lights so I think it looks okay

 

Errr, that can be good or really bad.

IIRC, if you press and hold the button, it will tell you two pieces of information:

The first LED pattern tells you the % battery remaining. Each LED is 20%.

If you keep holding it, it will blink and show another LED pattern. Each LED lit on this second pattern tells you the battery health. Each LED on for this pattern indicates how much more worn your battery is, and if all LEDs are lit, the battery is no good and must be replaced.

One of the D620s at work had a bad battery like that with all the LEDs are lit for the second part. In this condition, it won't even stay running for 15 minutes before running out of batteries and powering off (this is on what the laptop reports as full charge). If you have the Dell power management software loaded, it will also tell you that the battery needs to be replaced.

Dell Official Site: Laptop Battery FAQ | Dell

Batteries have a shelf life. If they aren't charged for a while, they get damaged and don't hold as much charge anymore. If it's new and it's doing this, I'd request a replacement.