The failure can be the charger (cheap to swap out and test) to battery and motherboard issues.
My choice when I see this issue is to get a new charger and hope that's is rather than suffer the cost of a Dell repair bill.
I have a Dell Vostro 1510 laptop which is now 7 years old. Last December 2015 my brother shipped me a new 9 cell battery to replace the 6 cell one which originally came with the computer but could no longer hold a full charge and Dell also no longer sold 6 cell laptop batteries for the Vostro 1510.
This week I started receiving a message on my laptop's screen saying the AC power adapter might need to be replaced. The AC power adapter which I have is the one which originally came with the laptop when I received it from Dell back in January 2009. It's a 65 watt AC power adapter.
Here's the message I've been seeing on the screen this week:
QuickSet
The AC power adapter type cannot be determined. Your system will operate slower and the battery will not charge. Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter or higher for best system operation.
A problem I've had for quite sometime is the plug on the end of the original AC power adapter sometimes will not stay plugged in to the back of the laptop like it did when it was brand new. I can slide the cursor over the battery icon at the bottom of my monitor's screen and sometimes it will say plugged in and charging and other times it will say plugged in but not charging. Does this sound like it's time to replace the original 65 watt AC power adapter with a new one from Dell or just keep using the old one? Right now it's saying the battery is fully charged. Could an old 65 watt AC power adapter damage a new laptop battery?
Big Steve
04/01/16

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