Dell - Faulty DC jack - Plugged in, Not charging

Mar 8, 2018
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I dropped my Dell Inspirion 5559 on it's side a couple days ago and the charging cable pin broke. Fell about 2 feet from my lap. I bought a replacement AC charging adapter cable, official Dell brand, identical wattage & amperage, same codes. I tested it with a multimeter to be sure, and it works with the necessary 19.5 V.

When I try to use this replacement, the LED lights up for only about 1 second before turning off. I have tried removing and replacing the battery. I have also tried reinstalling the API battery drivers. My BIOS is up to date. I have not had problems with the battery itself in the past, so I do not think the battery has suddenly died.

If I run the laptop on the charger alone, with the battery removed, it will not boot past the BIOS warning saying that it does not recognize the AC power adapter. I try to click continue but it either freezes on the following Dell screen, or reloads the warning page. Diagnostics seem to show everything operating normally.

Using only battery power, not plugged in, the laptop boots and functions normally. But I only have about 50% left, so I am trying to save that for now.

This leaves me thinking it may be the DC jack? But when I use a multimeter on the back of the laptop, testing the battery charging pins, I get some energy readings of 0.17 - 3.36 V per pin, and one pin fin with no voltage reading. I don't know what levels they should be. Do these readings mean the DC jack is working?

Is it worth trying to replace the DC jack? Or other recommendations?

Thank you
 
Solution
plugin ac adapter to your power jack cable, dont connect it to motherboard. Just test only your power jack cable voltages, another side should have same voltages 19.5v on both red cables

fagetti

Prominent
Mar 1, 2018
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plugin ac adapter to your power jack cable, dont connect it to motherboard. Just test only your power jack cable voltages, another side should have same voltages 19.5v on both red cables
 
Solution
Mar 8, 2018
2
0
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Thanks for the suggestion, I checked the old DC jack and it was having occaisional drops in voltage? Very strange.

Anyways, I replaced the DC jack with a new one bought off ebay and it seems to be working fine now! Very happy to have found a fix.