[peakay]

Hi there,

I did something really dumb while on vacation: I plugged in the wrong charger to my mini 10 and it was a 30v, not 19v as the dell charger is.

It was only in for a few seconds before I realized my mistake. Before doing so, I had run the battery completely out of juice watching a movie and the front white light had been blinking red and white.

>> Where I am now: the computer will startup and run completely normally using the correct charger, but with the blinking red and white light. However, at startup I get a dos/bios message stating that the battery is not recognized, hit f1 to continue. When I do that, OSx starts up normally, but if I unplug the charger, it immediately goes dead. The osx battery status at the top right of the screen when in osx shows the battery with an x through it.

My question:

- Do you think I merely need to replace the battery....
- OR do you think my motherboard is fried, the part that manages the battery charging, etc.?

*** If anyone lives near newport beach, ca and has a battery they would let me swap to test it or if anyone has a near dead one that is still partially functional to send or a cheap one to sell, please let me know.

Any and all help is greatly sought and appreciated. I love this system and would like to get it back working properly.

Thanks!!

[rrfranczak3]

Here:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/sale...ry-0m456p.html

[ahandlen003]

Its the battery. If it was your mobo ud hav a lot more problems booting up.

[peakay]

Originally Posted by ahandlen003

Its the battery. If it was your mobo ud hav a lot more problems booting up.

Are you sure? I thought perhaps I blew some electronics that only handle battery /charge management. I got online with Dell support chat yesterday and went through some troubleshooting steps -- they are sending me a new battery under warranty, so we'll see how that does.

Ethically I am suspect on this, but since I let the battery go to absolute zero and never was able to test it after that, i don't know 100% if the other charger caused it. It was plugged in for just a few seconds and in doing some research, I have seen other people who have reportedly ran their battery to 0.0 and had it continue the flashing red light with no charge recovery.

Thanks for the help.

[peakay]

Wow, Dell service was outstanding on this. I had an online chat with a support worker in India yesterday at 2:30 pm who ordered the replacement battery and it arrived here in California today at 1pm (shipped from Houston). Again, WOW, I doubt Apple would have service like this, especially on a refurb unit!

Anyway, I popped the new battery in and all is fine. I don't know if the momentary high voltage charger killed the battery or running it down until it absolutely quit, but I don't recommend running the battery down that far just in case.

Thanks DELL and those who replied -- much appreciated.

[ahandlen003]

Haha glad to know u got it fixed. And thats what we are all here for.

[peakay]

BAD NEWS

I spoke too soon...there is definitely a hardware issue. The new battery had a charge in it and my 10V would not replenish the battery resulting in the same error message once the battery fully depleted along with the flashing red/white light.

So... I am going to return the whole thing to Dell now. They are sending me a box and then it will be sent to their repair depot with an expected time of 7-10 days.

FYI, since it has OSX on it I was concerned about returning it that way. Some people on this forum say Dell doesn't care and leaving OSX on it is no problem, but I hate to take the chance. I asked the custserv guy on chat if I could remove the hard drive and he said i could without affecting warranty. definitely a time saver as it would have added up to hours to first reinstall XP, then reinstall OSX and all apps once it was returned to me. I'll also strip the apple sticker off of it.

This looks to be a good guide for removing the hard drive:

YouTube- Dell Inspiron Mini 10 SSD Swap

YouTube- Dell Inspiron Mini 10 SSD Swap

BTW, if you need service, use the Dell chat as they are excellent. You are going to be connected to someone in India either way and I find that it is easier to deal with those folks by chat and they do a superb job. my battery arrived nearly instantly.

will update this for the records with my experience as this evolves...I couldn't find much feedback on service from Dell on here.

Thanks!

[peakay]

Just to close the loop on this -- Dell fixed the unit and sent it back. it worked perfectly and I have had no problems.