Dell Inspiron – Workaround for ‘Power Supply Not Recognised’ Issue

dell-inspironpower supply

I have a Dell Inspirion and the power supply port appears to be damaged.

Basically when I plug it in I get a nice popup telling me that it couldn't detect that its a Dell power supply so it won't charge the battery and underclocks the system. It still works for other purposes (that is, giving power).

I thought it was the actual power supply cable so I bought a new one, that worked for a while, provided I inserted it at JUST THE RIGHT angle. But now that's not working anymore, so I assume its the part which connects to the computer.

The battery charging I can live without, the underclocking I can't. I'd like a way around this issue. Things I've tried:

  1. Updating the BIOS
  2. Replacing the power supply cable
  3. Inserting it at different angles
  4. Turning it off and on again
  5. Swearing at it
  6. Twisting it while inserting it

So, is there a workaround somehow? I'd like to avoid taking out my soldering kit and risking permanently damaging expensive equipment if that's allright. I'm hoping for a software solution.

Added: The exact model is a Del Inspirion N5010

Best Answer

If you're ready for a hardcore solution, you can unsolder the ID chip from the AC adapter and solder it to the laptop's motherboard or even create a fake ID chip.

An ideal solution would be to patch the BIOS, but I've found only this discussion, nobody did it (yet?)

Can something be done on the software side?

Yes! At least, we can overcome underclocking. Battery won't load.

Linux:

Add processor.ignore_ppc=1 to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/default/grub, then run update-grub. Reboot.

Windows:

This paper describes Windows XP performance control policies and mentions this:

NOTE: All policies will always respect the highest available performance state currently available as reported in the _PPC method by system firmware, when using the ACPI 2.0 interface.

So, no native support. But there are third-party tools. I personally had success with RMClock, other people in this thread suggest using ThrottleStop instead.

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