I sold my backup laptop a couple of weeks ago with a bad battery. The guy I sold it to called me a week ago after buying a new one and it wouldn't charge it. I told him to return it since it was most likely defective. He's gotten another one now and it's the same result. I'm starting to run out of ideas so I thought I'd see if anyone else has run into this.

Dell Inspiron E1705 w/ XP
Runs off A/C OR Battery perfectly fine but won't charge the battery at all.

He's not very computer literate and I'm trying to diagnose from a distance (he's an hour away). He has apparently tried another adapter from another Dell as well with no luck.

Any ideas?

5/22/2010 10:42:06 PM

change your phone number

5/22/2010 10:52:31 PM

Either he bought another bad battery or the charger isn't providing enough wattage to charge the battery when plugged it. I experience this on my old e1705 as well since the battery I have is kinda bad, but there's a work around. You can 'short it' of where you trick the battery sensor to allow it to charge it. You just use a thin piece of metal and fix it to the positive and negative slot. It's a safety feature on the batteries, but ends up causing false positives.

A safer work around is to deplete the battery completely by letting the computer die then charging it back up. Repeat this till the battery light stops blinking. Mine only needs to be depleted once to return to normal use. Although if I deplete it by accident, I have to repeat the process to charge it back to full otherwise it'll hover around 20% charge.


On a side note: it's probably the charger. You sure he has the right one for it? the 65w dell chargers can fit it, but it requires the 90w version. Donno why they made them interchangeable.

[Edited on May 23, 2010 at 2:34 AM. Reason : ]

5/23/2010 2:28:15 AM

Well shit, apparently I deleted this before I posted before.

My old power adapter had a wear spot show up about a year ago or so. Since this was the 2nd or 3rd power adapter for this laptop, I put some polymer tape on it to keep it from fraying. This leads me to think the adapter possibly has a voltage drop and needs to be replaced.

My bad, I don't know why I didn't add that back in when I rewrote the op.

^^ if I don't figure it out, I have no problem buying it back from him, fixing it, and then reselling it for more or using it at work to use with our sign.

^ After he returned the first one and got the 2nd one, he got an email from the seller that the original battery he purchased had tested properly. I have no idea whether it's true or not but I'm putting my money on the adapter. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something else that I wasn't thinking of.

5/23/2010 7:25:05 AM

Dell Inspiron E1705 w/ XP

there's your problem.

5/23/2010 2:04:41 PM

Yeah, my first adapter frayed at the stress point too, did the same thing with clear polymer tape that held out for about 3 years, till I had to buy a new one 6 months ago. It's the Achilles heel for the older dells and they cost like $70 new.

^ and honestly, Dell isn't bad, it's cheap and it works pretty good. I'm actually pretty impressed that my e1705 that's almost 4 yrs old now still works perfectly fine, minus two missing buttons on the keyboard. Still chugs through photoshop and plays some of the older games, like hl2 source, just fine.

For all of the drops and abuses that I've put it through, it has handled very well. Even though the battery life is aweful, it wasn't very good even new (lasted 60 mins max at idle), but just used it as a desktop replacement for mobile use. It stayed plugged in the wall 100% of the time.

Plus I got in on the slickdeal before it hit front page and ended up getting a 3400 laptop for 1100 with a 3 yr warranty. Actually ended up getting another 2 yr warranty on it for another $150. I'd probably should just retire it and get a cheap netbook to replace it since I just use my new desktop for edits and shit.

5/24/2010 12:43:37 AM

it's just that all of the Dell's i have owned or i have known people to own have had battery issues

5/24/2010 1:04:10 AM