This Post: An exact match at http://www.tomsguide.com/forum/newresponse/2819061 suggested update to ACPI Battery Complaint entry in my Device Manager to fix the elusive disconnecting of wall power intermittently and switching to battery power (original post 117 below). But, I had no ACPI Battery Complaint entry.
However, I was intrigued by a further comment re some PCs have a safety feature to ensure it doesn't over charge and that's why it switches from wall power to battery power, requiring unplug/plug of wall power line to get it back to wall power. Mine is like clockwork now 7 years after buying the DELL new and every 7 to 7.5 days. Was longer, I believe, in past. I see no System Events associated with this, which makes it impossible to diagnose. Dell had originally had me try different power cord adapter which didn't resolve it (see post 227 below). So they shook their heads and essentially said live with it or send to their repair facility. I chose not to send my fully configured machine to the hack shop since this problem was common and reported constantly on Internet across many other brands. The only solution I had was simply unplug and immediately plug back in.
The author's other comment was removing battery while plugged in if you use it only in "plugged-in" mode. Other posts seem to supply more detail as to why it is better to do this to extend battery life. Worth a try. Guess I'll find out quickly in 7-8 days whether I can power on without ever unplugging and plugging back in again, or whether removing the battery had no effect in the endless power issue. My problem now surfaces almost exactly weekly on every Tuesday. Without the battery as I am running now, the battery ICON indicated "no battery detected". Thus, I feel confident the code/bios/or whatever that checked the battery for over-charging will no longer execute and I will be forever over this issue. I'll return if there is a different result and update this post. If all is good, the answer is above OR maybe always use the PC in battery mode periodically to take battery down 70%.
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Post 212:For a couple of weeks my laptop power manager was reporting "plugged in, not charging." Scores of people have reported this problem on the Internet (Google the message) with really nobody wanting to accept the problem as theirs. You will find that the problem is not unique to manufacturer (some I saw were Sony, HP, Compaq, Dell, Lenovo, Acer). Operating systems reported were basically Vista and Windows 7 (now there's a clue). Solutions included replacing power adapter (can't imagine the exact same adapter being used for all manufacturers), popping battery out and reinserting it (sometimes several times and in particular sequence with disconnect and reconnect of AC adapter), BIOS upgrade, Motherboard adapter soldered weakly, etc. You'll find this problem starting on Vista in 2007 and continuing right into Windows 7 currently. So, what was exactly my symptoms? I always have my laptop connected to A/C power and after first charging to 100% it stayed there for some time -- don't know exactly how long. However, after changing power management options I began to notice the battery power decreasing every day along with the message above in title. After endless research, I decided it had to be software (Windows 7) and forgot it was A/C power sometime -- maybe when hibernating or sleeping. I was getting strange hibernation -- it would appear to hibernate, but came up as fast as sleep mode. Plus, had a few crashes to Windows 7 while in hibernation mode that recovered on complete restart. Whatever the problem is, I reset it back to normal (this time) by removing power cable AT PC (not wall), cleaned it off good, and plugged it back in. Immediately it restarted charging to 100%. Now was it dirty? Couldn't tell. Maybe it was just having it out for about 40 seconds. If I were to guess, the laptop senses when the cable is attached (plugged into wall or not -- just physically there) and notifies Windows to begin monitoring the power port for power and problems. Quite possibly it wiggled loose (but I doubt it) sometime while moving the laptop to its bed each night on the floor. Who knows -- I'm just a dog and can't smell anything wrong. See also Post 227.
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Post 227: I finally decided to check with Dell about the problem at Post 217 which occurred 3 times so far since 1/6/2010. I decided to avoid the verbal struggle with the overseas 1st line of support and decided to try the Online Chat that I liked in the past. Well, not to get off the subject, but of course just getting to Chat was another problem. I could not get to it via the Dell Website. However, when I brought up Dell Support program on the PC and invoked it from there all was good. Now, let me move on to Post 217. 1st Line was of course snowed by the problem and details I gave them and simply, and IMMEDIATELY, told me to send it into the repair depot. Oh Boy. Motherboard problem he said. Yet, the problem occurs across multiple vendor machines? "Well, I'll send you an A/C adapter too to try!" In other words, he never heard of this problem and had no clue how to provide diagnosis support to isolate the cause. Anyway, I replaced my A/C power adapter yesterday and will see if it was the cause. BIOS is current, so that's out.
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