My Dell Laptop is Trying to Sell Me a New Battery
As I began working this morning I was immediately distracted by an orange flashing indicator on my Dell Vostro 1700 laptop. I looked down to find that the battery is flashing orange four times, then back to blue. It repeats this cycle over and over.
According to Dell support this indicates the battery is “bad”. They can’t be any more specific than that, because according to them the error is non-specific. The battery does hold a charge, though it is shorter than the charge it held when new.
But here’s the great part. I rebooted and went into the BIOS to see if I could at least clear the warning. I can’t. I did, however, notice this lovely screen:
Picture of the BIOS screen trying to sell me a battery.
So my laptop is trying to sell me replacement parts for itself. This might not be as bad if I could stop it from trying to remind me without taking out the battery.
While speaking with Dell support, they too were more than happy to try and sell me a new battery. They weren’t quite as helpful in trying to make the indicator stop flashing, however.
On a side note, is it too much to ask that computer manufacturers spell check their BIOS screens? They should at least “concider” it.
Well, a couple of weeks after this the laptop basically melted down. Dell came out three times to repair it (two new motherboards, new CPU, new RAM, new fans, new keyboard), but by the time the whole ordeal was done it wouldn’t do anything but post and then beep like a dying animal.
To Dell’s credit they did a warranty replacement, though it took a few days longer than I would have liked.