I’ve been working on a Dell Inspiron 1525 this week. A reasonable, mid-range laptop, this model tends to suffer from a power related fault when the a/c adaptor is plugged in and working fine to power the machine, but the battery is not being charged. If you point the mouse cursor over the battery symbol in the bottom right corner of the screen you are met with the dreaded phrase ..” x% available (plugged in not charging)”. This means that once your battery runs flat, you won’t be able to charge it unless you remove it from the laptop and find an external charger.
If you Google this phrase you’ll see how relatively common an issue it is, and also the wealth of solutions to the problem there appears to be. Some of the more outlandish include blowing into the power socket on the side of the laptop or pressing down on the Inspiron logo on the case bezel!! If that works, then great. However, in my experience, this problem is normally down to a faulty charger board which requires some major surgery on the laptop to locate and replace. Not a particularly expensive part (about £25 or so for a quality replacement board), but a bit of a pain to fit. If you have an Inspiron 1525 with this problem and don’t fancy tackling it yourself, bring it along to My PC Surgery and we will sort it out nice and promptly for you.