Laptop Battery dead??

[Wildfire]

I have a dell Inspiron 9200, which aside from wanting to sell, I think the battery has gone. In the last 3 weeks it's life has dropped from 2.5 hours down to 30 min. it's gone from 60 min to 30 in the last week. Now is this the battery or could my charging circuit be gone? I don't want to buy a new battery and have the computer kill it, because they are not cheap.

[Kinky]

Could you not pick up a battery on eBay, and add the price of the new battery to the sell price of the notebook, so that you don't lose anything?

K

[thepassenger]

Batteries can and do blow cells I'm affraid. I belive Dell have a battery display in the BIOS so you can bypass starting Windows.

Yank the power cord out and wait for it to kill itself due to lack of power.
Charge it for a few hours and dive in to the BIOS to see if their is any power shown in the meter.
If yes, I'd suggest the battery has one or more dead cells.
If no, I'd suggest charging circuit.

The battery on my XPS has a little external charge meter, press a button and green LEDS light up. If yours has a similar feature using it whilst doing the above might show up any oddities (BIOS says 100%, battery says zero), tis worth a try.

[Wildfire]

I hit the power meter on the battery, it says 100% but only lasts 30 min now. Blown cells?

[thepassenger]

Definetly sounds like dead cells. Hunt on fleabay for a 2nd hand replacement