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    Battery Failure

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Geoffxx, Aug 21, 2012.

  1. Geoffxx

    Geoffxx Notebook Evangelist

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    OK my battery has just failed and dell says warranty is only for 1 year on battery, this I can understand if the failure is due to wear and tear as they do wear out with continual usage

    My problem with the battery is not wear and tear, the system is seldom used on battery and is on AC power 99% of the time, this failure happened after shutdown and reboot a few hours later, the bios reported that it could not recognise the battery and would not charge it basically disconnecting it from the system so the battery is now disabled, this is a hardware failure in the battery circuit not the actual battery which for me does not represent wear and tear and should be covered under warranty

    anyone else have experience of a battery hardware failure like this and if Dell replaced it anfter one year

    Thanks in advance for input

    update - they have agreed to replace the battery FOC as it seems to be a HW failure of the battery and not wear and tear, the system doesn't recognise the battery and gives a bios warning on boot - battery not recognised press F1 to continue or F2 for .................etc This was a sudden failure and not over time, no warning or intermittant fault - I shut down and on next boot I got the error.
     
    Geoffxx, Aug 21, 2012
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  2. radji

    radji Farewell, Solenya...

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    Howdy. I don't want to be a downer, but I had close to this sort of problem, and thought it was the power adapter, then the motherboard, but in the end it turned out to be the battery. It was an old Dell Inspiron 1501. Its symptoms were it wouldn't charge the battery and would only run while plugged in. If I were to unplug it, it would shut down after about 15 secs. Occasionally Windows would not recognize the battery, but I never got a warning from the BIOS about the battery being faulty. The dell tech I talked to (he had a cowboy accent so I believed him) says the indentifier chip in the battery works just like the one in the power bricks. If there is something wrong with the battery or its not the correct one for the system, it will alert the BIOS. Apparently the batteries and power bricks can do a self-test...but that part I have a hard time believing.
     
    radji, Aug 21, 2012
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