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My 1.5 year old Dell Studio 15 notebook computer has a battery and I keep it attached to the notebook but 98% of the time I just plug in the power adapter.

Lately when I unplugged the power adapter, the battery was only good for 10 minutes, and a few days ago, when I unplugged the power adapter, the computer simply turned off.

When clicking on the battery icon on Win 7, it says "Plugged in, not charging":

alt text

is the battery dead? Or can Windows 7 have any option to not charge the battery?

It is a Dell Studio 15, I wonder if in such case, it looks like it can be a manufacture's defect, would Dell replace the battery? (if there was a recall, then they probably would, i think). The notebook is 1.5 year old.

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Your battery is probably dead, but here are a few things you can try:

  1. Perform an ATX reset. Remove all power (battery + power lead) and hold the on button down for 30 seconds.
  2. In control panel > power management (or the equivalent from XP) turn off the options "shutdown / standby when battery critically low" or similar, so Windows will never try to turn itself off when the battery is low.
  3. Run the battery right down (probably not that difficult :D)
  4. Leave it plugged in for 16 hours.
  5. Start her up on battery alone and see how far you get.

Repeat steps 3, 4 and 5 if you notice your laptop stays alive for longer and longer periods of time as suggested in step 5.

If this isn't successful you have effectively diagnosed a dead battery.

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The battery is probably damaged, but if you don't want to invest in a new battery you could try to workaround the issue each time it occurs.

What worked in my case is to power off, remove the battery, and push the power button to discharge capacitors, etc, as explained in other answers here. That works but needs powering off/on

So here's something shorter that may work: leave the laptop plugged to mains, remove the battery, put the battery back on: the battery resumes charging.

You need to do that each time you get the issue, but at least it's fast & doesn't need power off.

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  • my Macbook Pro which I got in 2013 is still great. Excellent webcam, fantastic screen. My Dell Studio 15 gave constantly white crystal lines from the webcam. My Yoga 2, despite having a fantastic screen, have many apps behaving weird: the "play" icon can be 1/2 the width and 1/2 the height, and it becomes a tiny little button. Some text are also really small. It is like nobody tweaked the system to work with the super high resolution screen. In fact, if I were to buy a Windows machine for my parents, I was thinking of getting a Macbook Pro and then installing Windows on it Oct 12, 2018 at 22:47
  • my answer is just an optimization of the accepted answer. I was very glad to find that working for me saves a lot of time and preserves the machine Oct 13, 2018 at 8:37
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The battery is probably can be unplugged by itself. Try powering off the netbook, unplugging the power adapter, wait around 5 minutes and then unplugging and then replugging the battery.

I have had exactly same message when a slider that kept battery in place was somehow moved and battery was partially extracted from the slot.

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Dell usually has a Diagnostic partition that will boot by selecting F12 on start and then select Diagnostics. A short diagnostic will run and then you will be prompted to proceed to a more detailed, GUI based diagnostic. You can select just the battery and AC adapter and run the tests multiple times in a row if needed. They may have a windows based version you can access as well. Not sure I know ThinkPads ship with one.

Dell batteries usually have a one year warranty.

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