Laptop power on battery problem

Jesusfrk611

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I know what you're thinking but I couldn't make a good title for the thread to explain...

The battery does hold about an hour and a half of charge. Yes it does need a replacement, but I have tested this same thing with a good battery with the same results.

It is a Dell Latitude D830. Nothing special. Just something I'm working on to resell for cheap. But it won't power on when the AC power is not plugged in. With only the battery in it shows no signs of life at all. As soon as I plug in the AC adapter it will power on with the power button and I can immediately unplug the adapter and the battery will power the laptop from that point on. If I shut it down with the adapter plugged in and then unplug it there's no powering it on until I plug it back into the the AC adapter. If I gracefully shut down the operating system with it on battery it has been able to turn on with the battery if I do not plug in the AC adapter between shutting it down and turning it on. If it is not gracefully shut down (hold the power button down for a hard shut down) then the AC adapter will need to be plugged in in order for it to turn on.

The BIOS version is the latest on Dell's website. I've tried resetting the BIOS as well by pulling the BIOS battery for awhile. It is either BIOS or motherboard related. If it is BIOS I'm hoping maybe someone has seen this before and has fixed it. If it's motherboard I doubt it's fixable but hey, maybe someone knows anyway. It's not OS related. It does the same thing without a hard drive installed and the OS doesn't boot until the computer POSTs anyway which it obviously won't do if it doesn't turn on.

Any last ideas on this? May just sell it as-is to someone who will keep it plugged in if I have to, but if I can figure this out it would be cool.
 
Hi! The only thing that's comes to this feeble old mine is a capacitor. That would be very hard to find, but if you have the ability you might find it. Look for a bulging cap. I was a electrician in USAF, but that was a very long time ago.
That's the best I can offer you at this time!!
Good luck!
 
In a nutshell you have a bad cell in the battery. It will take a charge but won't hold it. If this is the case here, scoring a rebuilt battery will fix that.
 
DOH!!!
Missed that. Hmmm
It could be the power jack is worn out. When you plug in the brick it breaks or makes a circuit which tells the power system the brick is plugged in and to run off of that while charging the battery. If it's on and the brick plug is pulled, it will switch over to the battery.
An old friend had that problem with a Toshiba. He replaced the jack and it straightened it right out.
 
Yes the other battery I tested was good. This battery says it needs replacement in the BIOS, but the other one didn't and it held a better charge. I sold it with another similar Dell Latitude awhile back and that laptop was working just fine. I even tested this battery on that laptop before I sold it and it powered on when on battery power only.

If it's the power jack then I would think unplugging the power jack may be a good test of that. So I'll try that.

I'll take it apart when I get the chance and check all the capacitors.

Something I tested last night is that it doesn't always power back on with a graceful shutdown on battery... Up until last night it just always had.
 
It does sound like battery capacity problem but I think donetao nailed it. The caps are not holding charge. You may look for bulging caps but it's not the only indicators of cap problems. You can look for leaks.
 
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