Chosen Solution
Hello everyone, I was very pleased with receiving a new battery replacement for my Dell XPS 13 9350. They battery works like it should…or at least I hope it is. A new problem has started with my computer where my computer suddenly hibernates as if the battery was drained, but the computer is plugged in. According to the Dell Support forum, when something like this happens, there should be a sequence of amber and white led blinks, which I never catch. I’ve performed every diagnostic test on this device. Ran the Dell Support application. It found nothing wrong. Shut down and ran the Dell Support Diagnostics tests (F11 then use F12 to scroll down to Diagnostics), ran that and it found nothing. Checked the Event Viewer in the Microsoft Administrative tools. Even with a BSCS, the log is still greek to me, but one thing that caught my interest was that there was an information notice that a “Critical Battery Trigger Met” (Event 524, Kernel-Power) which makes no sense because the battery is plugged in and fully charged. A few seconds later according to the log an Event 42, Kernel-Power occurs stating that “The system is entering sleep” and “Sleep Reason: Battery”. Either I installed a bum battery or the computer is rejecting it. II was working well yesterday. I event let the battery run for about 6 hours just to test the fitness of the new component ant it worked splendidly. But new this new issue started last night when I got home. Two nights ago when I installed the battery, I had blown out as much dirt, hair, dust, and keyboard crud with a can of compressed air. Even with the added protection of a plastic keyboard cover, there was plenty of junk in there. Could something in the canned air corrupted something?
Another factor, I had tracked my package with UPS. According to the shipping log, the battery was still at a shipping facility over the weekend. Whats more, only of the people who live in the house either didn’t here the delivery person, or the delivery person didn’t knock. So the package, despite being layered in cardboard, foam, and an anti-static bag, sat out on my front porch in the 25-30 degree F weather for a few hours. Could outside weather conditions factored into this random behavior? The manufacturer of the replacement battery is not Dell but an OEM. Could there be proprietary meddling? What could be causing this malfunction? Update (01/30/2020) Here’s what the summary looks like.
This chart shows battery usage over the past three days.
Update (01/31/2020) It’s not the battery!
I’ve started to track the amber/white blinking pattern. It might be 4 amber 1 white 4 amber 1 white 4 amber 1 white before shutting off. Could it be a CMOS error?
You got a defective battery based on the discharge curve. Get it replaced and try again before you go blaming other parts of the laptop. Unless you have issues with 2 replacement batteries it’s probably not a laptop problem. Dell is picky about the charger Sense IC having the right hex ID to charge the laptop - they really don’t care about batteries as much. The laptops do reject 3rd party packs, but I’ve never seen them reject a properly decrypted one - it’s the ones that were done wrong or have bad values that don’t match what the laptop is expecting. Dell does sell parts (often not directly to limit liability), so I would not have settled on a clone since you can get a genuine battery. The best clue is price - if it wasn’t that much cheaper then what a company like Parts People sells for ($150) it should be fine. I would be suspicious of anything under ~$130. If the battery is too cheap, it’s likely a knockoff unless it came from a asset liquidation from a company who sells Dell parts AND it came from Dell directly before the discount seller got it. I totally get it for something like a D630, but the part is available and it’s internal so if something goes wrong it isn’t like the old days where you removed the pack and saved the laptop if you have time.
I ended up changing the critical battery action in Windows and it solved the problem. It seemed that intermittently, while plugged in, the battery would flag up as critical and Windows would put the machine in to hibernate. It did the same with a battery I supplied and one the customer supplied. In the end the customer was happy to keep the battery he supplied as it actually held a charge unlike his original and just use it with this work around. I stress tested it for a couple days and it didn’t hibernate and he’s been using it since with no problems. Not the best solution but at least he has a working battery and his laptop doesn’t hibernate while plugged in.
With my XPS 13 9350 setting the critical action to do nothing is certainly better than letting it go to sleep. It’s just a matter of dismissing a dialog instead of having to restart everything. Also, it seems like its hitting this condition a little less after I set the critical battery action to do nothing. A real solution would be better and I also would welcome an answer as to how to fix this instead of simply circumventing it like I am doing now. As far as I can tell Dell no longer sells new batteries…I have been in contact with Dell about it getting a new one. I would rather not get a new one as the 3rd party one is working fine except for this hibernation issue that popped up after I put the replacement battery in.
Martin, go into your power settings and advanced power settings - go down to battery and select the following options:
- Critical Battery Notification> Plugged in> off
- Critical Battery Action> Plugged in> Do nothing
- Low Battery Notification> Plugged in> off
- Low Battery Action> Plugged in> Do nothing It will still flash the warning lights, but the computer will keep working without any issues or problems. If I unplug my laptop from the power none of the issues happen, hence I only applied these notification/action settings to plugged in options.
