Acer Laptop strange power problems!

[maniac]

OK people, I'm at my wits end with this problem, really want to find a solution to it.

We've quite a few Acer 4150 laoptops in this place, and 4 of them have recently developed very weird problems with power, strangly all at the same time as well.

Basically the battery won't charge up in the laptop no matter what you do. I've tried numerous different power packs and known good batteries in them, no result. The weird thing is even with the power pack plugged in, the laptop will only run from battery power and when the battery is dead, it turns off and won't power on until you put another good battery in it.

If you remove the battery completely, then it runs from the AC input OK. As soon as you put a battery back in, it starts running from the battery again with the same results as the above.

The only thing I'm getting is the battery light flashing red at me insted of staying on, so there's obviously a fault of some sort, only problem is I can't find out what it is, or how to solve it, I've spend hours googling for solutions.

I've tried updating the BIOS, made no difference and I've re-soldered the connections on the power connector on the laptop incase there was a broken joint caused by the power lead being pulled etc. No difference. I've checked the CMOS battery voltage incase that may have been a problem (It has been suggested on a couple of other forums I found while googling) the voltage was OK.

If anyone has any ideas, please share them however daft they may seem!

Many thanks,

Mike.

[Joanne]

sounds like something is wrong on the motherboard that stops the battery from being charged by the power supply.

we had some laptops where the solder inside had come off from the pin in the power pack socket... but if your run off ac power then that can't be true.

How strange!

[mac_shinobi]

They still under warranty ?

[maniac]

No warrenty I'm afraid

Acer being decidedly un-helpful, refered me to their premium rate support line, which I can't call as 09xxx numbers are banned on our switchboard.

I've rung the local laptop repair place we use, and I'm taking one down to them later as they've never seen this problem before. They've got the proper Acer Diagnostics software so hopefully they can tell me what's wrong!

Mike.