I have been having the common experience of a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop refusing to recognise its genuine Dell external power pack, which was supplied with the laptop. It will run with it but I get the message that ''the system will be slower and the battery will not charge''.
Though this happenes most of the time there were occasions when the laptop started and ran normally, thus giving the discharged battery an opportunity to fill up again. I wondered what was different on these occasions and tried to spot what it might be.
It took a long time but eventually I recognised a pattern and began to treat the equipment in a specific way. The result was a success, because since I began to adopt an amazingly simple procedure the laptop has accepted the power pack every time. This has been going on for some weeks now, so I feel confident to share it. Here’s how.
I begin with both the laptop and the power pack turned off. Then I turn on the power pack and wait about 10 seconds. Then I plug it into the un-powered laptop. At this point I wait and watch until the little green light that indicates charging flickers after a few seconds, which usually does, though not if the battery is already at 100%. Finally I press the start button and it boots and operates as it should.
I have no idea why this should work, but on my laptop it appears to be reliable. The advice to plug the power pack in and '''then '''turn it on fails every time. It is clearly the wrong sequence on my laptop.