Trying to revive old Dell XPS laptop - dead charger?

[almoststew1990]

I am trying to revive a Dell XPS 1530 laptop. It does not power on at all. I plug in the charger and the charger's LED does not light up. Does the LED light up even if the laptop is not turned on? I.e. this would indicate a dead charger. If the LED is not meant to light up when the laptop is off, this means the charger could be fine and the laptop itself has issues.

But I don't know which it is!

 

[ajf]

If the charger does have a light on the charging plug, yes it should be on whenever the charger has power.
Not all Dell chargers have a light though.
I’ve found too, with XPS laptops, if they go completely flat they can be a pain to start up.
Best I’ve found is leave them on charge for a good hour or so before even bothering to try.

 

[Maundie]

Have you removed the battery and tried to start it just from running on the PSU, sometimes when the batteries are completely borked they stop the laptops from starting?

 

[thelankymatt]

If it has thunderbolt you can charge it up through that port if you have a usb type C charger/thunderbolt charging dock. Might give you enough juice to work out if it’s the charger or the actual laptop.

 

[Jimbo Mahoney]

My wife's XPS 13 is showing similar problems, although I *may* have fixed it.

Symptom = at least 50% of the time, powering on will only turn the keyboard LEDs on - no screen and no boot.

I unscrewed the bottom and disconnected the battery. Powering on in this state works fine every time. (i.e. powered only by mains).

So I disconnected the battery (and PSU) and held the power button down for 30 seconds (no idea if this actually does anything, but The Internet (TM) told me to do it!).

Reconnect the battery and rebuild and it *seems* to be better...