Dell Laptop. No power.

[Faustus]

Ok here is the deal. Friend of mine got a sweet deal on a Dell laptop. It had no OS on it but he powered it on and went into the bios. No issue. It was almost out of battery power and had no power brick any longer. Its quite beat up, like its seen some HEAVY use in the past, but otherwise its ok externally.

ANyway he got it home, and it wouldn't power on again. When he presses the power button the power light flashing for a quick second and there is nothing else. So he went and purchased a new power brick to try and charge the battery and its not charging.

Now it COULD be the battery... or it could be something wrong on the inside.

Anyone have any experiance with dells that could shed some light on this?

He doens't want to invest in a battery if he doens't have to because he doesn't want to sink more cash in if it can be avoided.

[HillJack]

ANyway he got it home, and it wouldn't power on again. When he presses the power button the power light flashing for a quick second and there is nothing else. So he went and purchased a new power brick to try and charge the battery and its not charging.

We just sold our old Dell Inspiron 3800, it has a dead battery - the battery charging light will blink constantly when the unit is plugged in and the BIOS shows it as always 0% charging, and it never increases/can't hold *any* charge. Plugged in, it (the laptop) works perfectly fine though.

Does it power up when it's plugged in? Try reseating the battery. Does it boot when plugged in? How about plugged in with the battery removed? If it still doesn't work, imho, the battery is hosed and will need to be replaced if he wants to use batteries.

[offline]

Try here

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/365.aspx

Dell and IBM are notorious for power/battery issues. Some have had success with the short & freeze method or the suspend & remove trick; but in most cases u need a new adaptor/battery.