Battery Light Blinking

MWeeks24,

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Please remove the battery and visually check the connector in the bay and on the battery for damage.

Check the charge directly on the battery, using the button and lights on the back of the battery. The lights should come on and stay on for a few seconds. If the indicator shows no charge, there could be an issue with the AC adapter instead of the battery. If any of the lights flash, then it may be a problem with the battery. Please tell me what lights come on and whether or not they flash or come on for a few seconds. Then reinsert the battery, and make sure that the battery will fully seat in the bay. It should be flush with the case plastics.

Try another battery, if possible. Try the battery in another system of the same model, if possible.

The 4 cell batteries should last about an hour without heavy use of the processor. 8 cell batteries should last roughly double this.

Dell warrants batteries for one year after the original purchase date of the system. After this time period, you should contact our Spare Parts department to purchase a replacement. Spare Parts can be reached at 1-800-372-3355 Monday through Friday from 7 AM to 7 PM Central time.

You can also purchase spare parts and accessories through our website. Start at:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/dellitems.asp

Put in your Service Tag Number, or choose your system and you will be taken to a list of new and refurbished parts for your system.

This knowledge base article may provide additional information.

If the system is not over one year old, you should consider contacting Dell Support for a hardware replacement solution.

Did you by chance just recently update your BIOS to A25? I flashed mine three days ago and my light does the same thing now. Inspiron 5100.

When I unplug the laptop and let it run on battery alone, it automatically dies as if there was no batttery at all. I plugged it back in and it is now charging again. Thoughts? Thanks.

might be a bad battery. do you have any other battery to try? put another one in this computer, if the same problem, then it might be the motherboard but if it doesnt, then its the battery.

I have also started the have the same problem. Once the battery gets to around 90% or 95% of its full charge the battery light will start to blink green. It blinks about once every 8 seconds and continues to do so as long as the system is on AC power. I have not noticed any performance lose or any problems because of the blinking battery light but I would like to know why it is doing this. Also the battery seems to be working fine; I still get about 4 hours or more of run time out of the battery so it does not seem to be damaged in any way.

Message Edited by Hogan99 on 01-09-2004 12:02 AM

MWeeks24,

You have a dead battery (IMO). I have the same thing: pull the AC power cord and the laptop dies (though the battery is plugged in). Luckly, I do have a extra battery now that I'm using. The first one, ehh...good as trash.

I have done some tests and the blinking seems to be a change to how the BIOS reports the battery charge status. It seems to be as follows:

Solid Green: Battery Very Low and charging.
Blinking Green: Battery is low (around 75%) and charging.
Off: Battery is 100% fully charged.

Keep in mind that when Windows says that it’s 100% charged it actually isn’t. When Windows says it’s now running on AC Power then the battery is fully charged.

If you flash back to an old BIOS version then you should no longer get the flashing battery light. It was just something that they added with the new BIOS versions.

Message Edited by Hogan99 on 01-21-2004 10:34 PM

Great!! Thanks for the help.