Power Adapter Problem

When I plug in my Dell Inspiron 6000 it tells me that it is not the correct adapter. It tells me that it needs to be 65W or higher, and it is. I've never had a different power adapter for the year and a half I've owned my laptop. Any clue as to what I can do.

 

hard shut down and pull out the battery and try again

 

that didn't fix the problem. any more ideas?

 

try a friends ac adapter to see if thats the problem

 

My m1330 complains occasionally saying it can't determine what kind of PS I have. Seating the connector firmly causes the problem to go away. If it doesn't, your PS may be going bad and can't provide 65watts any more, or maybe the connector is flaky, hopefully on the PS side and not the laptop side.

 

mine just said that today too now! haha, i have a 90 watt...i just unplugged it and plugged it back in and it recognized it.

 

try bios update or most of the time the culprit is the ac adapter itself

 

I had the same problem occur to me on my new Vostro 1500. The message occured about twice a week. A few days ago I flashed the BIOS and the problem has not come up since then - still crossing my fingers on this.

 

try checking in the BIOS and see if the ac adapter listed is correct. it should display the correct wattage, otherwise it is unknown. best suggestion is to look for another similar ac adapter and try it out. if the problem still exists, upgrade the BIOS, or the mobo might need replacement.

 

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Having the same problem with Vostro 1500 and Windows XP. It's not a "real" problem though as, if you remove the battery, the laptop still runs happily from the AC adapter. This indicates that the adapter is working fine.

You can stop the spurious "Warning" from appearing by altering the BIOS setting as follows:
1) Restart computer and press F2 key at boot-up to enter the BIOS screen.
2) Go down to "Post Behaviour->Adapter Warnings"
3) Press the Enter key and the (default) Enabled will light up green.
4) Use left arrow key to select OFF and press Enter.
5) Press Esc key and select Save & Reboot.

That will kill the annoying warning screen.

 

i have this problem with my e1705, i have to line up the connector just right in order to get the laptop to recognize the adapter.

you can disable the warning but the laptop will still run at slower speeds.

 

is the adaptor covered under warranty?

 

i received the same problem just this morning(2nd time this happened).

Does the ac adapter problem cause damages on the laptop??

 

I've had my laptop for about 2 months now, and the AC power adapter has already died (90W... it went "bnnnnnt...zap!" without warning one day, and smelt expensive, glad it wasn't the 1720 :\). I ordered another two 90W adapters, took two weeks to arrive.

I got by for those 2 weeks on a third party 90W universal power adapter. Had to shear the connection off the end of the fried charger to solder onto the universal. No biggie, except that the 90W wasn't recognised by my 1720, and wouldn't charge the battery. System performance was also sluggish, the T7300 was running at 1.6ghz, rather than the 2.0ghz it should have been running at.

All is back to normal now. Waiting for the means of being able to charge the battery again and run the 1720 as per normal gave me that nagging "Oh man, I can't wait until my **Enter Proprietary (Argh) Dell Item Here** arrives!" feeling again, just after I had gotten over waiting for the 1720 itself. Heh.

Just be warned that Dell AC adapters can be prone to spontaneously ****ting themselves. It might be an idea to order another one or two for backup, just in case, as it's gonna be a royal pain in the coinslot if you are half way through something when the AC adapter decides to die, giving you four hours battery life to see you through until you can get a proprietary dell charger for it...

 

I got an iGO ICE 90W universal power adapter more than a year ago and found it was not compatible with my previous laptop. Fortunately it was only $20. Last week I ordered the S35 tip and use it for my Vostro 1400. The same tip support Latitude D series and all the PA-10 compatible (most new Inspiron and Vostro). You may find this adapter in clearance at many places (e.g. RadioShack). The tip is available online and you may either use iGO S35 or Targus S35 (APTS35US) which are just different in color.

 

Is there no solution to this problem then? I don't want to remove the warning, because I can tell when it happens my computer is so much slower. I was playing Civ 4 and noticed how bad it was, when I shutdown, removed and reinserted the battery, it was crazy how much faster it was. My power strip isn't even that old as my dog chewed the wire on the first one. $50 something should last a little longer, especially if it isn't the battery. Is there a software update to end this tedious process?

 

No ideas? The problem is getting worse, it started happening a little bit...but now it is a daily issue.

 

Hey, I may be having a problem with my AC adapter as well but I'm not sure. Did the people with AC adapter problems notice a decrease in system performance and unusually high page file usage?

 

Yea...it is significant. I have to shutdown, unplug the adapter and take off the battery, then put both back and restart. Then it happens again the next time

 

I'm having the same issue on my Vostro. Will try re-inserting it and see if that fixes it.

EDIT: yep, it fixed it. Quite strange as I don't seem to have one of those rogue loose batterys like some people are reporting. Oh well!

 

I can no longer "reseat" the power adapter by using my technique of removing the battery and adapter. My computer can't recognize the power source, so my system performance is terrible. Does anyone know anything? I see complaints about motherboards going bad, is that the case?

 

I dont want to get my hopes up, but I switched to wall outlet directly and it didnt work again, but later on turned computer back on and it recognized for first time in a week. It is directly into the wall outlet. Here is what I think, and I am praying I am correct. I think using an extension cord/ power strip is taking away a slight fraction of the power, which is causing the motherboard to not recognize the weaker version of the ac adapter. The slight loss of power is what kills the system performance, as you are still working off of the ac adapter but not getting the necessary amount. Hopefully this hypothesis holds true, of course next time I turn it on it could happen again and make this all moot. Either way it would seem the motherboard or adapter is poorly engineered if this happens from use/time. Any thoughts?