READ BEFORE PANIC: Charging / Battery Issue on Inspiron 6400 / e1505

Hi All

I have spent some time on reseraching this issue. Nothing came up with a working solution but there is perhaps light at the end of the tunnel.

My Inspiron 6400 stopped charging the batteries. First I thought it's a faulty battery but also not charging the spare battery led me to believe that it is a board failure. Especially since I got a third battery from a friend and my Inspiron would not charge it either. What happened was that charging indication light comes on for a couple of seconds and then just goes out. Sometimes the battery charge indicator blinks red/orange and nothing happpens. I believed it to be a board failure and used it as an excuse to get a new Studio 15. Which is very nice by the way

I tried all the tricks I found, removing battery, pressing power button - used different (original) chargers etc. All to no avail. Quite annoyed I decided to put all Inspiron accessories and parts on eBay and sell what's good. Just to make sure I took my spare two flat batteries to my friend to test their health in his Inspiron. No red light etc but battery #1 would just not show a health status after 10min of charging. Battery #2 started to charge just fine. Just for fun and curiosity - though it will never work - I inserted battery #2 into my Inspiron and - SURPRISE - it started charging. All the way to full. I have tested it for a couple of days now and all seems to be back to normal.

It makes no sense to me as why battery #2 gets charged in friends machine didn't it work in mine in the first place? Battery #1 is dead and seems to be the culprit of all this. Anyway, just wanted to suggest this. It may provide a glimpse of hope. Thought my board had gone and all pointed in the direction. Now I may sell the Inspiron and get more than a dead machine will catch.

Hope this helps,

Martin

PS: When I reinserted battery #2 for my curiosity test I had the hard drive removed. Don't think that this made the significant difference though?!?

 

This is indeed an interesting find.

To my knowledge the Inspiron 6400/1501/e1505 are models that are more than 3yrs and had already in the state of EOL. Most of the original battery should be busted by now that cannot be charge further due to the low capacity of the cells.

My 9cell battery cannot be charged recently with the addition of red light blinking on my Inspiron 1501 indicator. Even when i boot into linux, the battery cannot be charge further.