[XPS M1330] AC not recognized/battery not charging

Hi folks,

I've had my M1330 for about 2.5 years now and recently the AC adapter stopped being recognized by the laptop. By this, I mean that it no longer charges the battery or runs purely on AC power without the battery in.

The light on the power brick still comes on; I've also bought a new PSU and tried this but no luck.

The battery indicator doesn't show any problems and I can still run the laptop on the battery (although it's down to about 15% charge now).

I managed to get it to recognize the AC adapter by wiggling the cable a little at one time, but now no amount of wiggle works.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this happened or what is the cause, but I'm starting to think it's a problem with the power connector on the actual motherboard.

 

Probably, that's how my last Dell died. They're the only ones that use the stupid 'pin in cable' instead of 'pin in laptop' power adapter design. That plastic circle inside the power receptacle on your laptop breaks easily, and once it does you're out of luck. You could try to get Dell to replace (in warranty) or at least repair it for you (shouldn't be too expensive), just need to soldier on a new socket.

 

Yeah I had a bad feeling it was this. I've been really disappointed with this laptop (my first Dell) and the motherboard has been replaced about 4 times.

I guess I'll try taking it apart and checking the jack to see if it's come unseated. Unfortunately out of warranty so I won't be spending money to have Dell fix it.