Dell battery replacement

[bhelms]

Would a tablet suffice for your needs?

I'm sure a tablet would work just fine for everything I would do on a trip which, now that I'm retired, will be mostly about communications. I bought this laptop loaded for bear because at the time I was starting to do some video editing and gaming, neither of which I do now as much of as I had hoped. And I do like the 17" UHD screen although I rarely watch anything in 4K.

As a reasonably competent DIY'er I'm all about keeping things running as long as I can unless they no longer fill my needs or I can't get parts which is rare. I always traveled with a laptop since I bought my first one in ~'97 so I'm used to the "inconvenience" of the larger size and weight. I'm also an old fuddy-duddy when it comes to change, like to remain in my comfort zone.

But you do make a good point! Maybe I'll get a modern tablet (I do have an original iPad which is still functional but hopelessly obsolete) before I leave for Egypt next July and leave the Dell at home...

 

[bhelms]

OK - The operation was a success! Took me about 1.5 hours start to finish including 15 minutes to set up my ESD-safe work surface followed by 15 minutes just to get the bottom case open. (I do have a set of "picks", just needed to learn a technique.) It only took a few minutes to dismount the old battery. (Damn...forgot to discharge it as much as possible first!). There was no clip or lock or such holding the battery connector plug to its socket on the board; the plug has a "loop" to grasp to just pull it off vertically. I saw a good bit of dust/hair accummulated around the air duct and fans so I decided to deal with that while I was at it, and that extra operation took about half the total time the case was open. I dismounted the fans so I could get to a good bit of dust that was inside the duct and fan housings. I also tried to dismount the duct itself - 6 screws hold it down - but it was apparently stuck fast I presume by the heat sink grease holding it onto the heat generators and would not budge with moderate force, so I decided to not pursue that any further. (I hope that means the grease isn't all dried out and is still an effective heat transfer.) My motive for removing the duct was to get a good look at the portion of the system board that's hidden underneath. I did not see any evidence of a CMOS battery anywhere on the visible parts of the board and it's hard to imagine it would be mounted underneath the duct as there was only about 0.10" of clearance and it would be a b*tch to change! I used a battery-powered vacuum to suck up as much dust and gunk as I could get, then reinstalled the fans. Finally I installed and connected the new battery. I tested the unit before reinstalling the case bottom. It tried to turn on (Dell logo and fans came alive briefly) but wouldn't boot for some reason, so I connected the adapter. With that I was able to bring it completely back to life. It quickly told me that the clock had to be reset, as expected. So I reinstalled the case and put it back into my system. I noted that the battery level was 57% so I'm confused why the computer wouldn't come to life without the adapter...but it's apparently all good. As I'm typing this post over about 30 minutes, the battery was already at 85% and the charging stopped because I had it set to stop at that point. I reset the stop point to 100% using Power Manager and it resumed charging, now at 89%.

So I'll call this a success. I have yet to do the "calibration" and run the battery condition test a second time to get the report to compare with the old battery. I expect the new fully-charged capacity will be close to the 97-whr rating. If any issues pop up I'll report back. And at some point I'll give an update on what I've learmed about the performance using the new charge start/stop levels, as well has how long it will run on the new battery.

Tks all for your suggestions!

UPDATE 1: Here's a picture of the system board. I can't see a CMOS battery anywhere - let me know if you do.

UPDATE 2: I re-ran the Battery Report. It now shows that the design capacity and the full-charge capacity are 95.076-whr. Now that I know how do to this, I'll run it periodically to see how the battery is aging...

 

[Foxbat]

Glad you had a good outcome, plus got the dust-bunnies evicted. Your laptop should run cooler without that blocking airflow.

 

[primestar31]

I have a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 5505 laptop that needs the internal keyboard replaced. It appears that they are now sealing in the keyboards with melted rivets, so not so easy to replace as the older models.

I'll have to do a complete teardown to almost nothing to replace it. I did manage to at least buy a new keyboard already installed in a palmrest, so I don't have to snap off the old melted rivets, and do it that way.

Not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.

 

[arlo]

Can't be too safe i guess. Modern electronics, pc's are very resilient to stray static discharge.
Unlike the likes of Apple, Commodore in the early days where simply looking at one would kill it.
If you looked carefully all of the plastic interior surfaces should have a silver or gold tinge. Sprayed, conductive coatings that are connected to the ground plane.
All of the peripheral connectors and shields are grounded. Maybe my paper thing to shield the board seemed off kilter. I mean, unless you scrubbed your socks across the carpet and in the dead of winter with 10% humidity....yeah!
If I expected for you to do more than the obvious like you did. Clean the fans, things like that. I would have suggested a thermal paste clean and replace. Never use any of the liquid metal garbage. Just some good old zinc oxide Desitin.
Holy crap. Do you know that the thing that can kill a CNC fast is vacuuming the swarf from the work piece?
Static galore. A soft and medium bristle brush, canned or compressed air. Sure. Kimwipes. 97% IPA.
But. We're protected (mainboard and chassis) with massive ground planes and shielding. Components with internal diode clamping. Oops!
Not doing the task everyday. Congrats! Glad it worked out well. No need for multiple battery exercises though.
The battery bms takes care of that quite well and the battery connector data line reports to the uefi, then to the OS.
At times. Disconnecting the main battery will result in multiple boots. Perhaps the system talking to the new battery and grabbing the bms coms. Cycles, current state, cell balance.

 

[bhelms]

Can't be too safe i guess. Modern electronics, pc's are very resilient to stray static discharge.
Unlike the likes of Apple, Commodore in the early days where simply looking at one would kill it.
If you looked carefully all of the plastic interior surfaces should have a silver or gold tinge. Sprayed, conductive coatings that are connected to the ground plane.
All of the peripheral connectors and shields are grounded. Maybe my paper thing to shield the board seemed off kilter. I mean, unless you scrubbed your socks across the carpet and in the dead of winter with 10% humidity....yeah!
If I expected for you to do more than the obvious like you did. Clean the fans, things like that. I would have suggested a thermal paste clean and replace. Never use any of the liquid metal garbage. Just some good old zinc oxide Desitin.
Holy crap. Do you know that the thing that can kill a CNC fast is vacuuming the swarf from the work piece?
Static galore. A soft and medium bristle brush, canned or compressed air. Sure. Kimwipes. 97% IPA.
But. We're protected (mainboard and chassis) with massive ground planes and shielding. Components with internal diode clamping. Oops!
Not doing the task everyday. Congrats! Glad it worked out well. No need for multiple battery exercises though.
The battery bms takes care of that quite well and the battery connector data line reports to the uefi, then to the OS.
At times. Disconnecting the main battery will result in multiple boots. Perhaps the system talking to the new battery and grabbing the bms coms. Cycles, current state, cell balance.

Tks again Arlo. When vacuuming I was careful not to let the tip touch anything and I used a pig hair brush to loosen anything that wouldn't move.

I let it charge to 100% overnight. Now I'm running it on battery and will do that until it won't run anymore, trying to keep my eye on it so I can see the level right before it shuts down. Then I'll reconnect the charger and set the Power Manager to 80% max. and keep it that way until next time I have to run on battery.

BRgds...

 

[navychop]

Good job! Awaiting further reports.

I wouldn't worry about the initial battery report. I've seen similar oddness in other uses. I suspect that initial reading is set by Mr. Ran Dom

 

[bhelms]

Good job! Awaiting further reports.

I wouldn't worry about the initial battery report. I've seen similar oddness in other uses. I suspect that initial reading is set by Mr. Ran Dom

Actually, the initial battery report is stellar, just what I hoped for! I'll check it periodically, like every 6 months or so, to see how the new battery is holding up.

 

[navychop]

57%

 

[bhelms]

Computer is running on battery for almost 4 hours now, just moderate use but the display was on most of the time. It just hit 20% remaining and went into its "Energy Saving" mode. I have to move on so I might not get to see the actual shutdown...

 

[navychop]

That's OK. You'll smell the smoke.

 

[arlo]

Actually I have my lappy's set for 85-5 for on battery. Not sure how much you use yours mobile and unplugged. But 85% wont stress the pack. There are other tweaks that will maximize efficiency when unplugged.
If you have Intel and Nvidia graphics. Definitely disabling the Nvidia GPU in dev. mgr. will use tons less juice.
The Nvidia control panel. I think Win 11 hijacked it into settings. You have options to auto select or manually set applications that use either GPU.
This pc is not Win 11 compatible according to MS. So I'm running Ghost Spectre Win 11.
Fresh install it has minimal Windows garbage. But has an application that allows installation of various options.
There are many guides that suggest services that you really don't need. Do you really need telephony (related to a non-existent modem)? Stuff like that.
I did a 'tube search to refresh what the BMS reports to the OS. There are china-blackboxes for repair benches.
Individual pack balance and voltages. Charge cycles.
With new packs. An initial full charge with some float time. Then a test discharge and recharge. The BMS should send the data and you'll be golden.

BTW. That elusive cmos battery. Dell, those tricky guys. Can be found underneath the keyboard. New one to me.

Cmos Battery Replacement

 

[bhelms]

Just checked up on it. At almost 5 hours (part with screen off) it's now at 5% and begging to be plugged in. I'll let it go dark, wait a couple of hours, then plug it back in to charge to 80% max. and leave it there...

 

[Foxbat]

Holy crap. Do you know that the thing that can kill a CNC fast is vacuuming the swarf from the work piece?
Static galore.

We had a special anti-static vacuum that had conductive air ducting and crevice tools (I think they were a carbon-impregnated plastic) which worked well for safely sucking stuff out of a computer chassis. It was designed for vacuuming toner out of laser printers.

 

[telstar_1]

I downloaded Optimizer on my Latitude 5320- where can I find settings for % to charge battery?

 

[bhelms]

Just checked up on it. At almost 5 hours (part with screen off) it's now at 5% and begging to be plugged in. I'll let it go dark, wait a couple of hours, then plug it back in to charge to 80% max. and leave it there...

It finally shut down when I wasn't there to see it. I plugged the charger back in and after 3 hours it was back to 82%, now close to 100% because I forgot to set it to a lower value. I'll leave it at 100% overnight then give it another cycle tomorrow. After that, I'll recharge to only 80% by changing the setting in Power Manager, then leave it connected to the charger.

 

[bhelms]

I downloaded Optimizer on my Latitude 5320- where can I find settings for % to charge battery?

I don't have Optimizer installed in spite of several attempts so I can't answer first hand. (There's a known bug preventing the installation on Windows 11, but even Dell's suggested workaround doesn't work for me. That's why I asked Dell to help me install a Power Manager app.) However, I looked at the instructions for using Optimizer. It appears that there's a Power button in the User Interface menu, have you tried that? Otherwise you can access your BIOS on boot-up, select the Power screen (left side menu on my computer), then in the Battery Configuration options you can select "Custom" to manually set your battery charge limits.

 

[arlo]

Usually unless chipset drivers are included in the support application. I don't install Dell bloatware. Matter of fact I get requests to either remove the unnecessary or leave them out when replacing HDD/SDD in customers machines.
Anyhow. If you get the all too common Windows 11application install stall. Try right clicking the installer, select properties, and click unblock. After install you might even have to do the same thing to the exe in the program folder. Not to be confused with any shortcuts. For those, simply select open target folder with a right click of the shortcut and select more options.

Although Dell, HP, Acer....you name it want to have the stage with their own branded support applications. There are options that might even be less "fat' and do the job just as well. Like a 3 second search turned up Volt Guard from the MS store. Didn't try it. Something that sits in the system tray and lets you monitor and probably switch the power profile on demand. So if you customize when plugged in and when on battery for the built in Windows power plans.
I'm sure the right third party app will let you choose one of them instead of diving into control panel and digging deeper into the power plan setting. Dunno.

If you understand the various methods that the applications work to set the plans. It all boils down to they communicate directly with the pmic chip on the main board. The power management integrated circuit.
I guess you could think of it similar to how you can change date and time of the real time clock built into the main board in bios/uefi. But you can do the exact same thing thing in the OS and terminal/command prompt.
Cats look weird running around with no skin, huh!