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light flashing...& I can't remember what it means???...
Heyall...
On my Inspiron E1505/6400...
The small red 'lightning bolt' symbol (below my display)...has started flashing red then back to green...It's the lil' icon beside (to the right) of the battery light...When I 1st got the laptop, I had read somewhere what the light meant, but I can't find that info anywhere now...the battery died sometime back and I replaced it with a 'genuine Dell' battery (purchased on eBay), however it never accepted a charge and is now dead, keeping me teathered to the AC power supply...But this 'Bolt symbol' is for something else, right???...any advice here would be appreciated (ASAP)...I have a project that MUST GO OUT TOMORROW...so any quick replies...are really appreciated...thanks...
Kindest regards...
T~
ejn63
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May 19th, 2009 09:00
Flashing red means a dead battery - if the battery is original to the system it's on the order of three or more years old, so it's had a good lifespan.
williamkidd
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May 19th, 2009 11:00
Hi T,
Hopefully ejn (or someone) will correct me if I'm wrong here but the lightning bolt is probably the charge indicator. If you're running the laptop without the battery and with the AC adaptor only then something could be wrong with the adaptor itself. However, from what I understand, you can't use just any adaptor to replace it. It has to be one that works with that specific model. If you happen to know someone that has the same type of laptop then you may want to try their adaptor to see if it makes a difference but it may be tough to find someone with the same type. You could also try it in a different outlet to see if that helps, if you haven't tried that already.
The E1505 was mentioned in the battery recall from a few years ago (see also here) so if you still have that original battery it might be worth looking into if you bought the laptop during that time period. That won't help in the short term but it may be useful in the long term.
williamkidd
387 Posts
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May 21st, 2009 05:00
Hi T,
I'll cover the tech part first and then your posting question.
You can test both the battery and the adapter using a voltmeter or a multimeter (which checks voltage and other things such as resistance and current). Multimeters are more common these days. Your best bet would probably be to find someone local to test them for you if you don't have your own meter. It doesn't have to be a computer tech, just someone with a meter. Have you tried running the laptop with the AC adapter only and if so does it work correctly? The AC adapter is similar to using a cell phone charger. The adapter takes AC as input and converts it to DC so that the laptop can use it. If you look at a cell phone charger you should see AC input and DC output listed and your laptop adapter should be the same. It might be a good idea to see if you can get a replacement battery direct from Dell, rather than trying to use Ebay again, as their batteries should be new.
As far as your post goes, the auto-censor (or whatever it is called) that Dell uses will pull posts when a word is replaced with other symbols, such as asterisks, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the post that I am replying to pulled as well (your sentence that reads "getting burnt on a piece..." has asterisks replacing a word). It's picky but that is the way that it works. Hopefully this will get through before that happens.
(Note: This was written in response to another post by orionT12 that apparently has been pulled but answers the questions that were asked in it.)