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April 24th, 2025 23:43
17 R4, running on battery even if the charger is plugged in?
Charger is plugged in. Nonetheless it starts running on battery - for about 5 seconds. Then it switches back running on the charger. This repeats every 10-12 seconds until the battery is fully recharged. Then the issue seems gone. What is the trigger?
This is the 2nd time in 2 weeks that it happened. The rest of the time it runs just fine. I doing some heavy gaming.
Meanwhile I started my one troubleshooting =
Charger: Is fine. I have a second one. Issue shows with both of them.
Battery: Is as old as the laptop and aged very badly. Even if I rarely run my laptop on battery now it goes from 100% to 0% charged in a matter of minutes when under load.
DC Input jack cable: could replace it.
The Motherboard: please no.
Did someone's computer show similar issues? Please let me know how you fixed it.
Thanks.
DELL-Brad L
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April 24th, 2025 23:49
When you're doing heavy gaming with the power adapter plugged in, does it still work correctly? If so, this is by design, please see this article on hybrid power =
Performance Issue or Battery Drains While AC Adapter is Connected
It might be more pronounced (if this was while the system was under load) especially since the battery is not holding a charge for that long, the battery will need to be replaced. The hybrid design allows the system to utilize additional power under heavy loads and can extend the life of the battery by not making it run at 100% charge constantly (this article covers both scenarios).
Alternatively, if it's just doing rapidly like you're describing with no load on the system and the charger connected, I would still think it's related to the battery (since the system is reaching 94% at a faster rate). You can probably run diags/check battery health, but it should hopefully show it is time to replace the battery.
(edited)
wt67
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April 25th, 2025 00:41
@DELL-Brad L
Thanks for the quick answer and your very valid suggestion. Battery replacement is probably the way to go. Let's hope it's that simple. Already ordered.
To answer your question: Yes, normally everything works fine while gaming. Then, out of the blue the battery saver lowers the screen brightness. This tells me that the system is now running solely on battery even if the power adapter is plugged in (!?).
Then in a matter of seconds the system shuts down. Probably (as you are suggesting) because the battery can not hold the load. Then when I restart the system the scenario described in my first post sets in: 5 sec on battery, 10 sec on external power till fully recharged starting from 96%. This takes 20 min or so. Then the issue is gone.
As I said this happened twice the last two weeks, after years and thousands of hours of gaming on my AW 17 R4 with no issues at all.
After the replacement and a few weeks testing, I will let you know if the issue is gone for good.
Meanwhile - Thank you very much.
PS: What would happen if I completely disconnect the battery? Would the system allow it and recognize it doesn't need to do the hybrid power "thing" and just stay on external power?
(edited)
wt67
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April 25th, 2025 01:17
@DELL-Brad L
The DELL Support-Assist hardware scan gave the following result:
DELL-Brad L
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April 25th, 2025 21:10
@wt67 Happy to help! I think it would cause the system to not run as well when pushed hard on games etc., the idea with the hybrid power is to allow the system to pull additional power with the AC adapter to get higher performance, this is in addition to it not continuously charging the battery when it's already at 100%. I think what's happening here is the battery is probably discharging at a quicker rate on its own due to lower capacity/maybe a bad cell etc., causing the system to charge it a lot sooner (this is assuming the battery is losing its charge even when it's not being gamed on etc.). Sorry on kind of repeating this part here from previous reply, I just think it's a pretty nice feature to have that a lot of systems utilize. I personally own an m15 R4 and it's been nice, fortunately my battery is still pretty good, but I am hoping mine lasts as long as yours did, that's really impressive!).
Without the battery attached and only on AC power it should be something like this thread describes here: 17 R5, low performance after removing the battery I know some users here are discussing using a larger power adapter to bypass limits, but I think with how long this battery has lasted, that's most likely all that needs to be replaced/better solution.
In my opinion, unless the battery is showing signs of swelling, it'll be worth it to just replace it vs having no battery, even though your current battery doesn't last long it's at least adding you some extra time, especially if you're trying to do a firmware/bios update etc. (on this system it probably won't have more BIOS updates, but if it did, the system would likely block it without the battery being installed). Another point, is if you're doing software updates though and a power outage were to occur, the battery might buy you more time. I know in my personal experience a gaming laptop with a new battery when it's being pushed will not last too long on a charge, but it's definitely longer than a few minutes.
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