The ac adapter currently connected is not supported. system will continue on battery

hi guys,

please help

the ac adapter currently connected is not supported. system will continue on battery

bios is the latest one A12. tried power drain but same problem. tried another wall outlet, same problem

I dont have the battery connected anymore since its broken. I tried another power adapter and its giving the same error. it only happens when i play games, meaning when it requires more power then my FPS drops and i cant play the game anymore. i think its my motherboard. please help.

 

New Power jack connection needed on motherboard.

 

okay thanks. i dont have warranty anymore.

 

a decent laptop repair place should be able to replace the jack

 

alright. ill try to find a decent repair shop. thanks for the input

 

If it works except when playing games, then I doubt your power jack is the issue. It may be an issue with the power adapter itself. Is it a genuine Dell and how many amps is it rated for on the label? It sounds like something is drawing more current than your adapter can provide. I would also keep the battery plugged in even though it's dead.

 

I tried even when battery is connected and still im getting the same message. I borrowed my friends 240w power adapter from his m17x r4 and its giving the same message. It has been working since 2012. Ive attached the sticker on the adapter. Im from malaysia btw.

 

Under the power section of the BIOS, does it list the adapter type and wattage or does it say "unkown"? Do you get any adapter warnings on startup?

Try doing a power drain procedure. Remove battery and power source and hold down power button for 20 seconds.

 

I did try those things. also in the bios it shows up as 240w

 

Did you try disabling power adapter warnings in the BIOS.

If the adapter type is showing up in the BIOS and your laptop is powering up, then it's probably not the jack, unless it is not making solid contact in the center pin section and comes loose at random.

 

I did disable the warnings. same problem. I also did load bios to default. im not even sure what the problem is anymore.. thanks for helping me on this.

 

From a little searching, it appears to be a common problem even back to the R2. Some people state that you need to insert and remove the battery or some strange procedure like that. Others state that replacing the power adapter fixed their problems. Others had the motherboard and power adapter replaced but that's not much of a fix. I could not find an official fix from all the searching I did. Wish I could help further.

Some links:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ac-adapter-not-supported-fix.522640/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/ac-adapter-not-supported-fix.522640/

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19476675

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19507832

 

I did see these and tried the steps and was not able to resolve it. Im at a loss on how to get this fixed. im out of warranty, so not sure if calling alienware tech support would help.

 

Have you tried downgrading the BIOS to a previous release?

 

Not yet. the last time i updated the bios was 2013. when it was released ( i believe )

 

I already fixed the problem.
I swapped the video card from my friends m17x r4 and the fan started kicking. no message, no fps drops.

 

I have this problem. It seems if I remove the adapter from the adapter jack and kinda slam it back in, it sometimes starts charging. But I may have to do it 10 times, and there's no real obvious technique that works.

I have 3 AC adapters. All Dell official. It seems like for about a year they're fine, then this starts happening. With every one. One day I'm not going to be able to push it in "just right" and I'll have a useless system. (Well out of warranty - I'd thought about replacing it with the latest Dell XPS 15, but from the threads in that forum it seems to have a lot of chronic issues at this point.)

 

Dell has been doing this for years; identify the adapter via the centre pin. No id = no 'official' adapter and it'll downthrottle the cpu and/or refuse to charge (my 2004 D800 did the same thing).

In itself that wouldn't have been a problem, but the id pin and connection to the motherboard are all designed with the bare minimum of dimensions required to send a light-weight signal, not a power connection, such as the voltage and ground pins. People using the laptop as a mobile station (duh?) run a risk of having this feeble id connection broken at either the adapter end, centre pin of the plug or the soldering connection of the jack to the motherboard. If a different adapter does not work and ids fine in another Dell, then that only leave the soldering joint of the jack to mb.

A better, permanent fix is to relocate the id chip to the mb itself, so every adapter is id'ed as 'genuine', regardless of watts and brand. No issues due to frequent (dis-)connects, either. This guide was posted in 2009, mind:
How to solve the problem “Dell AC power adapter type cannot be determined”

The only adequate solution would be for Dell to design their bioses without such a superfluous check. If an adapter can't handle the draw then cpu and gpu will run crippled anyway and the battery won't charge while stressing the system, as happens with some of the Razer systems. Don't think we want to know how much money they've made by selling 'genuine' Dell adapters (and mb's) to their customers, replacing originals that were in perfect working order (apart from the id pin). Not to mention the egregious amount of electronic waste due to these shenanigans .

 

Well, I'm now at a point where slamming the adapter into the notebook socket no longer works. It's still baffling; I can sometimes - rarely now - get it to work that way with my Dell adapter, the one that says Dell, and my adapter I got off of Amazon, but my adapter with Flextronics on it (all are the right model number) seems to work well. I do realize Dell uses Flextronics as an OEM.

That's what baffles me. If it was the jack in the notebook, I'd assume all the adapters would have the same problem. Yet over time, they all seem to start having this problem at various service times. Since one of them still works, you'd assume something was changing on the adapter plug side, but I can't see what.