Thursday, May 11, 2006

Question for the hardware geeks   posted by Razib @ 5/11/2006 06:10:00 AM
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I've got a dell 5100 laptop, and I've had it for 3 years now. I'm sure it's on its last legs, and I'm looking around. Anyway, I had this weird problem, and I just want to know what's going on. Over the past few days I've had issues where the computer wouldn't recognize my AC adapter. But, I noticed something weird, my battery, which has been draining and charging erratically for nearly a year now seems to often LOSE power when the AC adapters is in. For a while I couldn't even boot the computer up, the green lights would come on, and then disappear (or I'd get an error). The battery was down to zero, but the AC adapter was plugged in. Now I have the battery removed, and it seems to work OK. What's going on here? Does the computer automatically try and use the battery to jump start the system when there is a battery around? (and since my battery was at zero it just shut down?)