I have a year-old Inspiron 1501 notebook that has been working well for the most part since I bought it. A few days ago,however, the battery began losing its charge capacity. It went from 1 hour or so down to 10-20 minutes. Last night, my AC adapter stopped working in certain plugs, and today it will not work in any plug I try.

What is going on here? It looks like both my AC adapter and battery will need to be replaced, but what do you think caused the problem? I do not want the same thing to happen again.

Before I buy the parts, is it possible the laptop itself could have caused the problems (which I think is unlikely), or could have it been caused by an external factor? My thinking right now is the power adapter malfunctioned, causing the battery to kick the bucket, and then the power adapter went with it a few days later.

I guess there's a chance the Laptop caused the problem. But I doubt it. I'm thinking the
AC adapter went bad and started overcharging the battery which damaged and killed it.
Then the adapter just finally burnt totally out. But that's just my guess as I'm no Laptop
expert like HTRN . HeHeHe :-)

Quote: Originally Posted by Slaymate I'm thinking the AC adapter went bad and started overcharging the battery which damaged and killed it. Then the adapter just finally burnt totally out. But that's just my guess as I'm no Laptop expert like HTRN . HeHeHe :-)

i would believe that also

before you do anything to your notebook make sure it's not on warrantee anymore (some have more than 1 year of warranties)