I have an old (manufactured in 2017) Dell XPS 15 that has served me well. Its battery has been fading for a while, but I haven’t really cared because it is almost always plugged into a docking station. A couple weeks ago I took it on a trip where I actually used it off its leash, and the battery would last about two hours, but that wasn’t a problem because I could recharge easily. I brought it home, plugged it into the docking station, and everything was fine. We were leaving on a different trip a week ago, so I powered it down and unplugged it so that it couldn’t get fried should a spring thunderstorm come through while we were gone. When I got home yesterday and tried to power up I got absolutely no response; even the little light on the power button stays off. I put it on the charger overnight, but that didn’t help. I’ve tried the 30-second “hard reset” advice (both on and off the charger), and that’s had no effect, either. I’m suspicious of the CMOS battery, but getting to that will require some serious effort, and I REALLY don’t want to permanently brick this thing, so I thought I’d ask if anybody here has any other suggestions before I go down that route.
A tired lithium-ion battery that depletes to 0% will often never recover. I am guessing that is what happened. And, having had Dell’s in the past, they won’t fire up at all if the battery is at 0%. The battery is an integral part of the in-unit electrical circuit.
Cheap replacement batteries are easy to find online.
You’re talking about the main battery, right?
Yes.
If a CMOS battery has failed, the system will still usually start and get you to a BIOS screen at least.
Well, I bought a new battery and installed it, and it’s been charging for several hours, and the laptop is still dead as a doornail. I’ll let it charge overnight, but I’m not optimistic. I suspect I’m going to have to pry the SSD out and put it on an adapter if I ever want to see that data again.
Well, now I feel bad. Hopefully it was not too expensive.
Nah, $40 or so. It was definitely the right thing to try first.
Since Limey is not around, I will do my best impression. Here goes:…
Ahem….get a Mac.
Yeah if you want to protect yourself from planned obsolescence, Apple is the way to go.
Eh?
Oh.
#limey
For only $2,500 you could buy a Mac with a brand new battery. And for just an extra $500 you can purchase a cord to charge it.
How much is the awl you’ll need to chisel your headphone hole?
If you haven’t already, try disconnecting both the power cord and the battery, then hold the power button for 20-30 seconds. (Not sure if that’s the hard reset you said you tried.) Then reconnect the battery, plug in to power, and try to turn it on. Some laptops can be really fussy when the battery completely dies, and I had to do this trick with two Dell laptops at work this week.
I didn’t try that specific sequence (I never tried the 30-second push when the battery was disconnected), but I tried the button push dance several times with the old (presumably dead) battery and the new battery, and both on and off the charger. Not wanting to do something stupid and risk losing the SSD, I took it over to Computer Nerdz and they’ll look at it soon. A man’s got to know his limits.
Cool. For future reference (if you ever need to do it again), holding down the power button with all power sources disconnected drains any residual charge from the capacitors and other components in the system. It is an annoying yet sometimes necessary missing link to truly resetting the system. And even when you’re doing all the right steps in the right order, sometimes it takes some luck too.
It turns out that some small component in the upstream part of power management developed an internal short. Fortunately, it appears not to have caused a cascade of problems, and it was easily (easy for the shop!) repaired by scavenging a part from some other dead computer. So I’m back up and running, fully backed up, and starting my search for a replacement, but without the proverbial gun to my head.
As long as you didn’t send it to the same shop as did Hunter Biden. Glad you got it fixed.