XPS 15 9560 will not charge its battery

I bought a replacement battery for the laptop and it has been working fine for a few years.

Suddenly it displays an error that this battery is not recognised and will not charge it anymore.

I bought a replacement battery (again) thinking it is a battery issue, plugged it in, but still the same issue.

I have also just discovered that the AC adapter is not "recognised", this maybe/probably the reason it is not charging the battery?

I know Dells use some hardware inside the AC adapter and the laptop to detect "genuine" Dell adapters, is there a way now to get over this, as the adapter seems to be working just fine otherwise?

 

Go into the sBIOS and disable AC Adapter Warnings in the Post behavior tab and see how it behaves afterwards

 

Hello, I have but it still refuses to charge the battery. It still does not recognise the AC adapter and have no other at hand to test with.

I could try to see if it can use the USB-C to charge the battery, except you apparently need a HUGE USB-C charger, over 60W or more...

 

What battery did you buy for Dell XPS, are the power supply and battery original?
I buy original and compatible batteries on https://www.psaparts.co.uk/
https://www.psaparts.it/
Never had any problems,
it is true they are a little salty but it is worth it.
Are the battery for Dell XPS, the power supply original?

 

Not necessarily. I took this on with a different laptop that doesn't natively support USB-PD charging and found the battery only needs / allows ~15W of power. The machine running though does hit about 45W and if you try gaming it exceeds the USB-PD limit of 100W an flaps the power input while engaged.

If you can defeat the brick/laptop verification you can use USB for charging with a trigger cable / usb charger. I went with a 100W charger because I have a power bank that accepts 100W input and the charger works with the cable directly to the laptop and provides stabled power. I also use it with the PB inline as a UPS of sorts or for consistent power. While running normal desktop apps the PB provides a couple of hours of power before using the internal battery.

 

The original Dell AC adaptor still works fine and the laptop works fine when plugged into the mains. But the AC adaptor is not recognised - so there is a fault in the recognition circuitry. As I said earlier the fault could be on the AC adaptor, the cable, the socket, or the motherboard hardware.

Reading on the Dell forums, it appears you can charge the laptop off of the USB-C only if the USB charger is very, very beefy at 60W or over (that would be 12A over the 5V line, incredible currents, I suppose it would melt cables and tracks). Apparently Dell have hacked the USB-C port and can feed 130W of power into the laptop (that would be 25A+ of current over the USB-C connector, is that even possible?)

Anyway I will go test if I can have the AC adapter connected and at the same time a USB-C charger connected too, maybe that might trickle charge the battery.

 

AC Adapter is a bit generic. So, you have 2 power bricks and the Dell works and some secondary brick that doesn't?

USB-PD and Dell's USB power are going to be 2 different types of charging mechanisms. PD maxes at 100W currently. If Dell can provide 130W over USB they're doing something proprietary on both sides of the power connection most likely to power / charge while using the GPU in gaming mode as it will exceed 100W.

Phones can exceed these power requirements over USB as well. My OP 8 Pro can do 65W and newer versions coming out are going to hit 100+ with proprietary bricks / cables. So, it's always possible to exceed specs from USB-IF but more mainstream supplies / cables tend to be certified and won't hit 100+. Most of the cabling used for this is 26 or 24 AWG and will handle it just fine. It gets iffy with cheaper cables using 28 AWG or higher as the wire is finer and won't handle the higher currents being passed on them.

You could always get a usb meter and see what you're cable / power supply is pushing to the unit as well. They're bout $20 on Amazon and will take some of the guess work out of the situation.

 

So this is a 4 year old XP 15 9560 with original Dell power adapter and after market battery (not Dell). This battery (and the laptop) has worked perfectly for about 2 years.

The Dell AC adapter works and I can use the laptop, but suddenly in the last few days we got the BIOS error "The AC Adapter wattage and type cannot be determined". On top of that we also get the error "An installed battery is not identifiable and this system will not charge this power pack".

The battery is not charging anymore. I replaced the battery as I had not seen those two error messages above, and thought the battery was dead, but the new battery also does not charge.

So I know there is an issue with the circuitry that identifies the AC adapter as "Dell". But this fault could be anywhere, on the AC Adapter, the cable, the DC in socket and/or the motherboard.

There are no computer shops I can walk into with my laptop to try other Dell AC adapters. I will see if any of our local friends may have one.

I have tested the internal cable on the laptop's DC socket and the middle pin seems to be OK, but for good measure I bought another internal cable one from ebay.

If that does not fix it I will have to buy a new Dell AC adapter.

If that also does not fix it then the problem will be on the motherboard...

 

OK all problems now fixed!

1) old AC power adapter is not being recognised although happily working. Some fault in its Dell proprietary circuitry, or as simple as the DC cable. I bought a new Dell AC power adapter and all works fine now.
2) The after market, replacement battery, also not being recognised, even though the previous battery, also after market, works fine. Two non genuine batteries, only one is being recognised. I will try to return the other one.
3) I also replaced the internal DC socket + cable, just because I bought a new one, there was nothing wrong with old one.

 

Always nice to have a working battery that charges as a backup. All of the cross checks / validation in some systems makes finding the issue a bit more complicated than it should be. I think some OE solutions do this for maintaining the "experience" and some do it for the $$$ by being captive.

I know Dell OE chargers aren't cheap nor are their batteries. For what you could do aftermarket for say $100 easily balloons to $300 when using OE parts. At those prices it makes some contemplate replacing the whole system instead of buying the disposable parts.