Laptop power adapter/power meter inconsistency

[sandia911]

Laptop power adapter/power meter inconsistency

The power meter on the lower right hand taskbar on my laptop shows an inconsistent power charge. Sometimes, the icon appears to be charging the battery, other times it appears to be running on ac power, and also, it appears to be running on the laptop battery.

The strange thing is, the laptop is plugged in. The power meter should only be showing the computer running on AC power (of at least charging). But, when the laptop is plugged in, the power meter should never show battery life decreasing.

But it does exactly that. For 10 seconds it appears to be running on battery, and it swaps for another 10 seconds running on ac power, and it repeats. Obviously, this is not normal, and slowly but surely, the computer dies of power, even though it is always plugged in.

The power adapter is less than a month old.

What's the problem?

[Virtualbody1234]

What model laptop?

Is it still under warranty?

[sandia911]

it's a generic future shop laptop. I've been travelling with it, and its less than 2 years old. It has an extended world warrenty.

[clocker]

It's probably the power port on the motherboard- one of, if not the most common failure points in a lappy.

Can you jiggle the AC adaptor plug in the port at all?
Does the icon change states as you move the plug?

Although I'd suspect the power port you can also try removing the battery and see if it'll run on just AC- sometimes a bad battery can screw things up.