Inspiron 1420 Charging / Battery Issue

Hello everyone, I am hoping someone can help me out or at least point me in a direction for a possible fix. I have an Inspiron 1420, bought in August of 2008, that is running Windows 7. About a month ago, the ac adapter quit working, it appeared the cords were damaged.

On the advice of a friend, I bought a Targus 90w ac adapter that he said works great for his. So I picked one of those up and all was good, charging the battery and everything. A couple weeks later, the ac adapter stopped charging. No messages or anything during boot. When Windows starts, the battery icon shows a plug for a second, then just goes to show the battery. The batter will show either just the % remaining, or some crazy number like "1345 hrs 25 min 33% remaining". The battery light on the front of the laptop does NOT light up at all.

After this happens I do some research and find out Targus adapters do not always charge Dell computers. So I reach out to Targus to complain and they say in fact it should charge the battery, and that they think it's a bad tip, so they send me a new one. I think that's great and am hoping that works. New tip comes and I try it out and it's the same thing. It doesn't show that the ac adapter is plugged in at all, but the battery is not losing charge.

So then I decide that I am just gonna buy a dell adapter. Find one at walmart and bring it home. Same thing. No indications on the laptop that anything is plugged in. Adapter has power, because the blue light on the adapter is on, but not on the laptop.

I tried flashing new BIOS in hopes maybe that was it, but it will not let me install it unless AC Adapter and Battery ware working properly, which it seems they are not.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Chaz