Laptop won't draw AC power anymore!

Hey guys,

I got my refurbished Dell m1210 about 2.5 years ago. For months now, the battery has been useless, which I'm not surprised about -- I've never replaced it. We're talking like 3 minutes on full charge. So I just typically keep it plugged into the wall (with the battery in).

This worked fine until a couple months ago, when I'd be computing away and then I'd get a little popup about being on battery power or something, as if I had unplugged from the wall. Usually a little power cord jiggling would solve this. Then, in the last few weeks, on 2 or 3 occasions the jiggling didn't work and so the comp shut down (AC power LED not even flickering). After minutes/hours of intermittent trying, the AC power light would suddenly come on again and I could use my comp again.

Until now. It's been a day and I just can't get the thing to realize it's plugged in. The power cord appears okay because it has the glowing green light, as usual. Does anyone have any ideas? Even with a completely dead battery I should be able to get AC power, right? Thank you!

 

there are two problems you could be having,
1: which would be the worst, your mobo could be bad and wont find a charge anymore
2: your power cord could be bad. on mine, the box has the green light showing its getting a charge, but the cord that connects to the box and laptop is twisted up and broken so it wont send it to the laptop.

hopefully you just need to get a new power adapter.

 

Or the metal isn't contacting in your laptop (normally a case of bending a pin somewhat).

Try identify the problem a bit more and hopefully we can track it down

 

It sounds like it could be the power connector jack in your laptop. That part can be quite fragile on some laptops.

This link might help some.

http://www.uofr.net/~greg/hardware/laptop_power_troubleshooting/

 

I would support the damaged DC cable theory already mentioned above. Do you wind the DC cable around the PSU when you are transporting the computer? This eventually overstresses the conductors in the cable where it comes out of the PSU.

However, there is also the possibility that the PSU is defective and not providing enough power even if the LED is on. Borrow a multimeter to check whether power is reaching the DC plug.

John