Does anyone have any experience repairing laptops, i have a dell laptop with a charging problem, when the charger is plugged in then i start up i get an error message, charger not recognised press f1 to continue, the little baterry icon says 32% plugged in not charging.

I've tested the charger and it's giving me 19.35v, i removed the battery and turned the computer on with just charger plugged in, i get the same error message but the computer powers up ok.

When i turn the laptop on with out the charger plugged in it starts up ok with no error message, then when i plug the charger in i get the little plug icon next to the battery giving me the same message plugged in not charging.

What do you think the problem is faulty charger even though it gives me 19.35v faulty battery or other charging problem.

I had same issues with Fujitsu lap top and it was charging module on motherboard (unrepairable without changing motherboard).

Is that 19.35 V with a load across the charger, or open?

It's a common Dell problem, I've had their chargers suddenly do this.
Are you using a 3.34Ah or 4.62Ah?
.....Purchasing a replacement genuine 4.62Ah 19.5v Dell charger will solve this problem. They are around £10 on eBay.

It's 19.35v without any load, with dmm leads connected to the inner and outer of the plug, the centre pin doesn't seem to do anything.

You'd think the centre pin would be the positive supply but it's not it's the inner metal body of the plug that is positive and the outer metal of the plug that is negative, i'm thinking it's a fault with the centre pin.

It's a 19.5v 3.34Ah charger with octagonal plug, i'll order a genuine dell charger and see if fixes the problem.

It's definitely the charger mate, replace it for another genuine one. Try and order a genuine one as the cheap Chinese copies tend to affect the mousepad and cause the cursor to go mental.
Had this happen many times. Even though your charger is their 3.34a type I'd go for the 4.62a type as the 3.34a is rubbish and can suddenly stop charging the battery and give you the 'plugged in, not charging' problem. You will get an error at first before the laptop loads Windows saying the power of the adapter cannot be determined etc and the laptop may run at reduced power, press F1 to continue etc.
Any genuine hexagonal 19.5V/4.62A Dell charger will do the trick.
Let me know how you get on....

Why do they call them hexagonal when they're clearly octagonal?

shorty wrote:It's 19.35v without any load, with dmm leads connected to the inner and outer of the plug, the centre pin doesn't seem to do anything.

This doesn't really test whether the supply is faulty or not. The no-load voltage being roughly correct doesn't really tell you a great deal. Loading it up will tell you a lot more - what you'd expect of a faulty supply is failure to regulate the voltage (maintain it around 19.5 V) at different current values. If it does maintain a roughly constant voltage at different current values, then you don't need a new power supply.
Just grab a few big resistors, stick them across the supply and take a measurement. Make sure the values are sensible, a total value of about 20 Ohms should do it, and measure the voltage. Then get it off, quick.

Yep it's definitely the PSU. Had the same thing happen a while ago.


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It was a power supply problem, i cut off the plastic shroud surounding the plug it as three wires one centre wire that goes to the centre pin and the other two +19.5 V and negative.

The centre wire was broken, i've learnt this is the power adapter identification wire so the laptop knows it's the correct dell charger, i soldered the wire back together and it started charging with no error message, this will do me as a temporay fix until the new charger turns up.

Good stuff.