How cab tell whether the battery or power supply is bad. It's an Inspiron 6000. It died last night. I've removed the battery, tried it, and the same thing happens. Light is on the charger, and as soon as I press the start button, thye power light goes out. I have to unplug AC, and when plugged back in, green light is on again (until I hit the power button, then it dies out again)

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 that just turned two years old.

After one year, my dell 6-cell battery started to falter, so Ipurchased a new 9-cell battery. This worked fine until a couple ofmonths ago when I noticed that my 65W adaptor was frayed. I bought anew 65W Dell Inspiron 6000 ac adapter andit worked well for about a week until I noticed that my battery wasn’tcharging at times. If I was patient, or unplugged the adapter andplugged it back in, the battery began charging and all was saved.

This lasted only a short time until my Dell Inspiron 6000 batterywouldn’t charge at all for long periods of time, and sometimes thecomputer wouldn’t turn on, even if plugged into the wall. I thought itmight still be the adaptor, so I borrowed a fully functioning 90W Delladapter from a family member to test the system. This worked better,but still not great.

When I removed the battery and started only fromAC power, the functionality was also intermittent. Usually, if thecomputer actually started, I received the start-up error “The Inspiron 6000 AC AdapterType could not be determined, etc. etc. etc.” After pressing F1, thecomputer booted, but if the battery wasn’t in, the computer didn’tusually last long before shutting off. Unsure if maybe the battery wasthe problem, I put the 6-cell Inspiron 6000 batteryback in, and it too wouldn’t charge, although (together with the 90Wadapter) my computer would at least start more consistently if pluggedin. The error remained however, and sometimes the system stopsrecognizing power and switches to my ever dwindling battery power untilthe adapter is recognized again.

The problem is with the jack on the motherboard inside our Inspiron 6000’s. This is the jack you plug your power plug into on the back of the laptop.

Somehow the jack gets worn and does not make correct contact withthe laptop so the Laptop does not see the power supply as a legit Dellbrand. So the powersupply will not charge the laptop battery and run the laptop at the same time.

DC power jack repair guide. Do-it-yourself instructions.

Modern laptops are all sold with built-in wireless laptop ac adapter.Some power notebooks used by corporate road warriors will have powerfulcellular adapters that connect the laptop to the Internet via the cellphone infrastructure

A bad connection between DC-IN power jack on the system board and the system board is a very common problem with dell pa 12,dell e1505 and Dell Inspiron 6000notebooks. If your laptop is out of warranty, then you can fix theproblem by resoldering DC-IN jack on the system board. If it’s stillunder warranty, it would be fixed at no charge to you. Problem symptoms:

• Laptop randomly shuts down without any warning.
• Power LED and battery charge LED start flickering when you wigglethe power cord or the AC adapter tip on the back or your laptop.
• The battery will not get charged.
• When you plug ac adapter for laptop, the laptop appears to be dead and there is no LED * activity at all (DC-IN jack on the system board is broken).

To fix the problem, you have to take your laptop apart, remove the system board to resoleder or replace the DC-IN jack. dell pa 12 and Dell Inspiron 6000 disassembly guides will help you to remove the system board. Take a closer look at the power jack on the system laptop board witha magnifying glass. In most cases you get the power problem because ofa bad connection between the DC jack and the system board, you’ll see acrack between the DC jack connector and the system board.