Thursday, September 15, 2005

Dell Inspiron 600m battery blinking when it should not!

My love for IBM thinkpad is increasing day by day when i work with my dell laptop.

Right now I have a problem with my battery and its indicator light. Once my battery got low and my laptop switched off or hibernated and even after plugging ac power the indicator was blinking with red light showing low battery. The strange thing here is it was still charging my battery. Even if it is 100% charged or on ac power it was still indicating as low power.

The solution which works sometime is discharging it completely, taking out the battery and again putting it back was sometimes working for me and the low battery indicator was behaving as expected but if i again take out the ac power and if that stage reaches where it will again be low power and switched off/hibernated then the same problem arises.

Now i am thinking that the probing method which is finding the battery status and indicating the light to glow red or green must be reading wrong status.

To verify this I will need to replace the exact same battery and find out. I will do this today as one of my friend has the same configuration inspiron laptop i.e. 600m i will be able to detech where exactly the problem is and then i can do real diagnosis.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi dipesh,
i am having the same problem.
let me know if u come across a robust solution.

regards,
ravi
ravigupta1981@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

I'm having the same problem too...help :(

Dipesh Khakhkhar said...

Well as I have mentioned above, there is no good solution and only viable solution is discharge your battery completely. Make sure that it should be discharged to the extent that as soon as you try to start it should shut off. Then plug it again and make sure that you don't use battery that you bring it below it's cut off level (this is the level which is observed by a part of battery monitor and it uses this to show status light)

Secondly one of my colleague has written a small program to test battery and that indicates that my batter is good to throw and it is time to get a new battery.

If you guys need that program let me know i will send you by email.z

Unknown said...

I have the exact same problem, but it only started when I bought a replacement adapter on ebay. Any tips? Thanks.

Dr. Sachin Kale said...

Hi Dipesh,
I am having the same problem 2 years down your problem. May I know what you did about it?
I would be grateful to know what happened to it.
By the way your blog is interesting. Keep it up.

bcarter said...

Hi... just went through a chat session with Dell Support. They are believing that the blinking red light is an indication of a temporary battery failure.

1. Remove battery from unit.
2. Unplug AC adaptor
3. Hold down power button for 5-10 seconds.
4. Wait 1 - 1 1/2 hours before reinstalling battery.

5. If this doesn't work, the battery needs to be replaced.

Hope this helps!

DDHS_Bands

Unknown said...

Can you send the battery test program to my email account? I just ran into the same problem on my Dell Inspiron 600M (4 red/1 green flashing lights on the battery status LED). Tried the above suggestion of bleeding the battery dry and then recharging...did not work. Then tried the Dell suggestion of (1) pull battery (2) pull AC power (3) hold power button 10 sec (4) wait (i waited for about 8 bours)....did not work. Incidentally when I bled the battery dry in lasted for a few hours while idling! Not bad if the battery has trully failed.

Thanks,
Z

bcarter said...

Okay, I think I found it. It's a faulty CHARGER, not a battery.

We had another AC charger here for my laptop. When I plugged it in to the blinking-red 600m, it worked just fine.

DDHS_Bands
(didn't log in)

Unknown said...

What do you mean "AC charger?" Is this a component inside the chassis? I had a different AC power plug, but that changes nothing. Nor does running the 600M on battery power alone. The 4 red/1 green battery status LED blinking continues.

Thanks,
Z

Unknown said...

What bcarter wrote:
1. Remove battery from unit.
2. Unplug AC adaptor
3. Hold down power button for 5-10 seconds.
4. Wait 1 - 1 1/2 hours before reinstalling battery.

5. If this doesn't work, the battery needs to be replaced.

Just worked for me. Hope it helps someone else. Thanks for the post and the help

Unknown said...

Hi Dipesh,

I am having the same problem that has been discussed here. I tried the solutions stated here, but they did not work.(I did not drain the battery though. I wouldn't know how to recharge it.) The icon shows that there is 92% of the battery remaining, but the red light is still flashing.
Could you please send me the program that your friend wrote? I would like to try that. Also, if you could please tell me where and how to run that program, it would be great. I don't know much about computers, you see.
Thank you.
Anindita

TAG said...

I have found by letting the computer go through the process of going into stand-by and waiting for it to then go into hibernation, it resets the battery. From this point, recharge the computer battery and the blinking will stop. This is about a two-day turnaround. It has worked for me 3 times now because I keep allowing the battery to discharge too much and the blinking restarts. TAG

SSahu said...

Hi Dipesh,

I also have DELL Inspiron 600m which I bought in Mar 2005. I got the same problem today only. It was working well till today morning. When its battery goes off totally I got the red signal and I put on AC power, battery is fully charged now but still this red light is not going away. Out of 4 LED lights, last 3 are blinking with red color. Can you please send me the program which you mentioned in your blog to test the battery life.

Thanks
Sunil

Unknown said...

i'm having the same problem as all of us if you get this can you please email it me as well

Unknown said...

i bought a new battery which fixed the problem

Unknown said...

hi
I am facing a similar problem mentioned here.Dell vostro1400 laptop,all of a sudden battery blinks red.shoes 95% battery available, plugged in,not charging.Once i remove the power plug it turns off,which means that battery is no more available though it shows 95%.What could be the reason n how can it be rectified.looking forward to ur help.pls mail me at mails4chithra
with regards
CM

laptop batteries inc said...

dell inspiron 6000 battery
dell inspiron 6400 battery

Unknown said...

Thanks so much for the help everyone, Fixed it right away :)

Stepp said...

Here's the definitive answer from my research, talking with others and expermiting numerious times:

Follow the steps outlined by bcarter with a some small revisions

1. Allow the computer to power off because the battery is dead.
2. Totally drain the battery by powering up and letting it die several times.
3. Remove the battery from the computer and let it sit over night.
4. Unplug AC adaptor
5. The next morning, Hold down the power button for 5-10 seconds and release. Repeat this at least 3 times (Yeah...3x...believe me!?!)
6. Connect the AC addaptor.
7. Insert the Battery. The Light Will go solid green if you follow these steps to the letter. If not, repeat and slow down.

s p said...

Everyone, I found that this happens when battery health is going down. This is a notification for you to change the battery. Click on the battery meter button and it will recommend you to change the battery and stop blinking red. This is just a notification to let you know. It stops blinking red once it does it job of notifying you.