Hi, my Dell Vostro 1710 Battery has recently been undergoing issues with charging the battery. When the AC adapter is unplugged and a percentage of dell Vostro 1710 battery is lost, the battery will not recharge once the adapter is plugged in again. The battery power hovers at the percentage that it was prior to plugging in the adapter. When I roll over the dell vostro 1710 battery icon in the system tray, the balloon reads “95% available (plugged in, not charging)”.

Also, when powering up, a screen comes up saying “The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined. The battery may not charge. The system will adjust the performance the power available. Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter.”

I have also done a Vostro 1710 Battery test to try and diagnose the problem. When I press the button on the battery, all 5 lights on the battery clearly light up (which I understand translates that the battery is in normal working order). I can assume that it is not a problem with the Dell Vostro 1710 Battery nor the motherboard, leaving me thinking that it is the AC adapter. I also recently flashed the BIOS (today) and am now using revision A15 (latest for the VOSTRO 1710).

This has only become a problem recently. As a full-time student, this greatly hinders my ability to efficiently do my work; I cannot always find an outlet to plug in my adapter. It seems as though this has become a desktop, having to find an outlet wherever I do my work.

A:

“It seems that your laptop AC adapter is fried and you need a new one.

I think you should try to find out if your problem could be solved under the extended warranty on Dell’s Vostro 1710 range. I know they extended it by 12 months but limited to problems related to NVIDIA cards. Presumably, overheating that killed your AC adapter can be related to the nvidia card problem.

I’m still looking for the official DELL stance on that. Just be warned that you need to know your facts before calling DELL support. Also, another reason for you to know about the extended warranty is that a dead AC adapter possibly can be not the last of your problems (a fried motherboard is). My Dell AC adapter died a couple of months before the whole thing died.

Anyway, I’m still looking for someone who knows more than me about hardware to explain how failing AC adapters in the Vostro 1710 are related to dying montherboards and NVIDIA cards.

Hope it helps in some way.”

A2

“I finally found the answer I’d suspected all along:

The cause is a faulty adapter ‘design flaw’ Dell should take responsibility for!

When Dell knew of the problem they should have notified all customers and offered a recall or at least a permanent solution. But it seems to me instead, Dell just sits on a large stock of those faulty adapters and is handing them out to anyone within warranty. When your laptop warranty runs out you’re forced to by the correct (90W or higher) sold by ‘Dell’. And that’s only if you catch the problem before it fries your motherboard.

Here’s why the AC Adapters / Motherboards for a range of DELL Laptops keep dying on so many good customers:

The design of the hardware circuitry for identification of the DELL AC Adapter is seriously flawed. The root cause is the use of an UNSHIELDED cable between the controller chip on the Mother board and the ID chip pin in the dell AC adapter.

This unshielded lead acts as an ANTENNA and easily picks up electromagnetic pollution going straight to the chip circuitry. The hardware circuitry is not hardened to deal with electromagnetic fields.

Consequently this energy is dissipated in the chips on each end of the lead ruining either one chip or both chips if the electromagnetic spike was powerful enough.

So use dell laptop battery warranty to the max, this is a serious design fault. If outside warranty consider using a shielded lead or try to stay away from strong electromagnetic fields / switching.”