My old Dell Inspiron 1520 - problem with charging the battery

I have a close to 3 year old DELL Inspiron 1520. The original battery didn't hold charge for longer than 15 mins off late and so about 6 months back I purchased a 3-rd party 9-cell battery for my laptop. It was working fine till about a month back. It failed to charge when AC adapter was plugged in. So I asked the seller to send me a replacement since there was a 1-year warranty for this. The new battery also started giving the same problem and they sent me one more battery and I end up with the same issue.

Now I'm starting to feel that the charging circuit in the laptop is screwed up. I tried the 15 seconds power button trick to discharge the capacitors but still the battery does not seem to charge. One thing though is if the laptop is powered off or in sleep, and I leave the AC adapter overnight (say 6 to 7 hrs), the battery charges to some extent.

Is there anything else I can try ? Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks.

 

Check whether the system turns on only with the battery first
then check with only the a/c adapter whether it turns on or not?

if it does with both one by one!
connect the battery and the adapter both to the system and then check the the system setup (BIOS) for ac adapter type : ?

or else check in Dell Battery Meter whether what its says there ?

 

I've checked the info in the BIOS and it does say "AC adapter is connected and battery is charging" when the adapter is connected and similarly "AC adapter is disconnected and battery is discharging" when the adapter is disconnected.

Yes my system turns on only when the AC adapter is connected. My system turns off after some time with only the battery connected in that low state. I also checked the indicator on the battery by pressing the small button near it and only one light glows.

In Xp it says the battery is healthy and is charging.

I use linux primarily and it says the same about the battery too.

One thing I noticed strangely is the info from cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state

present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charging
present rate: 1 mA
remaining capacity: 383 mAh
present voltage: 10759 mV

I do not know why, but my guess is that the battery is charging at a very very low rate.

 

the battery u using its a 9 cell battery and may i know whether is the adapter 65 w or 90 w?

 

3rd party ... says it all