AC Power Adapter Type cannot be determined

Hi, I seem to be having the same trouble with my Inspiron 8200.  The battery level seems to be holding at 33% but the adapter does not charge the battery.  The other odd thing is that the laptop will not boot up with onlly the AC adapter, and not the battery.  Was this the same for you?  If so, did getting a new AC adapter help.  Thanks so very much.  I'm on a trip and really need my laptop.

 

same problem yes, get a new adapter

In Control Panel > Power Options, set it to "Home/Office Desk".

According to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318682

this will give you exactly what you want:

AC Power: Always runs at the highest performance state

Battery Power: Performance state chosen based on CPU demand

Pando

Thanks!  I see how to read the table now

Grant

Hi again,

It turns out that the new AC adapter has not fixed the problem. My laptop does not recharge the batteries when the AC adapter is plugged in. As well, the computer will not boot up when the AC adapter (but not the batteries) are connected. The laptop does maintain the battery levels when the AC adapter is plugged in.

This has led me to believe that the problem may be with the circutry that deals with switching the computer from running on AC power to battery power (internal to the laptop). Does anyone know if this is integrated with the laptop's motherboard or is this peripheral to the motherboard's circutry? If it is a seperate part what is the name of this part? Anyone know the approximate value of this part?

Thanks for your help!

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This won't fix your issue if the break is on the motherboard power connector (it happens too).

 

On another similar note, my 230w adapter stopped charging my laptop not too long ago. This is the most annoying thing in the world, as this is the only way for the laptop to run at full speed while plugged in. My alternative for the time being was to plug in a 90w adapter (full sized... i also have the 90w travel and 65w travel adapters). 90w adapters used to be the biggest, now they're on the smaller end. Anywho, because of this I was only able to run the laptop at half speed, and it would charge so slowly that even overnight it would not reach a full charge unless the unit was off. Charging + using it would simply overheat the ac adapter. I tried to run anything that pushed the unit and every adapter simply turned itself off. Well I bought a new adapter online, a 230w 19v unit for an XPS 1730, thinking they were the same. Well I was wrong. The brick is the same, but the connector on the back is different. The barrel connector and center pin are 50% larger (actually the pin is significantly bigger, about the size of my stylus on my phone). Needless to say this adapter did me no good (it's on craigslist now)so I decided to conduct my own repair of the original 230w adapter. What could go wrong? It's already broken and all it does is power the laptop, albeit at the lower speed, which makes it as useful as the underpowered 90w adapter.

 

So first things first, I took the unit and removed the rubber feet on the bottom. Beneath that are four (4) star security bolts (with the pin in the middle). Oddly enough the pins are low enough on 3 of them to simply use a star bit to remove them. The fourth I simply broke the pin off and use the star bit. It was late and I didn't want to run to harbor freight to pick up a set of security bits just for this project, however I recommend them for the rest of you.

 

After removing this you can pull the plastic clam shell apart. There isn't much inside this unit a normal person (such as myself) can fix. But there are a few things you can test logically. I knew that the + and - leads were good, otherwise the laptop wouldn't be getting power. Since it could not tell what adapter was plugged in, I can deduce that the center pin wire is at fault. Find the center pin wire, it's white and goes to a place on the board that says CID (i believe). The other two wires are labeled on the board as positive + and negative -, so you can tell pretty easily which is which.

 

Now you would have a multimeter to test continuity. Probe the other side of the PCB where the wire is attached, and then probe the center pin. On mine there was no continuity, which told me there was definitely a break in the wire. There are generally only 3 places this break occurs.

 

First is on the PCB itself. You should be able to see if it is attached or not. I've seen online where the cable for some reason just breaks off the board.

 

Second is in the cable itself, which is least likely as there are generally no stress points in the cable length.

 

Third and most likely, at the stress relief point on the barrel connector. The positive and negative leads are securely soldered onto the barrel connector with hundreds of wires onto large metal plates. This makes them extremely difficult to break. Unfortunately the centerpin wire is something like 28ga or 30ga wire, which is TINY. With very few strands to solder onto the center pin, it easily breaks off.

 

Testing this was not easy. I knew it was probably in the stress relief of the cable so I took the cable and cut the end off right before the first ferrite core. I stripped the cable completely from the barrel connector to the cut, which is approximately 5 inches. This is plenty of cable to work with. There are 3 wires, and it's unusual because this cable is a "coaxial" cable. It has 3 layers of cabling, an outside shield which is the outside of the barrel connector, an inner shield wrapped in a white layer which is the inner part of the barrel, and the center wire which is copper and is the center pin. I separated the wires (i left the center pin inside its wire and only stripped the last 1/4" or so off.

 

Now I tested continuity on this cable - (okay I lied, I didn't strip it all the way down until after this test). From the pin to the end of this short cable there was no continuity. I tested continuity from the other end the cable too. I probed the PCB and the end of the cable where the ferrite core was cut and it had continuity. Alright at this point we know the break is in the short run from the barrel connector to the cut. Strip the cable down, its a little more difficult at the barrel connector as its a thick piece of rubberized plastic. Use a razor blade and be careful not to cut to deep. After you strip this off you'll notice the terminated solders are encased in a thick clear plastic that's injected to prevent shorting. You'll have to cut through this carefully and peel the parts out. After I did this I saw the center wire finally, and it had completely broken its solder off from the connector which is just a thicker pin. Well I didn't want to solder the 30ga wire (it'd melt) back so I just removed this section of the wire.

 

Next I found some 24ga wire from some cheap speakers (I don't use speaker wire that small), which is more than enough for this project. I cut it about 2" too long and then soldered all the wires back in place. I didn't bother trying to reassemble it in a coaxial form, just 3 parallel wires. I twisted the two bare wire braids together (positive and negative). These are aluminum from the looks of it. Then I soldered the center wire in to the center pin and to the corresponding wire. Solder the positive and negatives for better conductivity and so they don't separate. I really should have gotten some shrink wrap, but I would have gotten that the same time as the security bits, so yeah.

 

After this I wrapped the 3 cables separately in electrical tape, then wrapped them together in electrical tape, replacing the stress relief/barrel cover and taping over that too. Ideally you would have slid shrink wrape over the 3 separately and heated it for a cleaner/better looking solution, then wrapping it in one large heat shrink tube to keep them together.

 

After this I plugged it in to test and made sure the light came on. Looked good so I screwed the adapter clamshell together and tested it. Amazing! Now the laptop runs at full speed finally!

 

Hope this helps, I know a lot of you out there wanted to know how to fix these. They're not cheap.