laptop woes...

[iLB]

two things really, first the battery wont charge so im tethered to the mains, any ideas how to sort this?

and second the wireless network routinely crashes, im not sure if its the laptop,the router, or the modem- again any ideas greatfully recieved

 

[Piemaster]

The battery has had it. Try googling for a new one with laptop make/model (eBay?) The laptop I'm writing this on is mains tethered for the same reason, I'd do well to get 1/2 hour out of it. Mind its a P4 desktop processor and I never got more than 70-80minutes out of it when new.

Wireless network. Again this laptop was always flaky connecting up wirelessly and tended to drop the connection after about an hour, reuiring a reboot to get back onto the wifi. Never had any bother though since I ditched windows XP and installed Ubuntu. Perhaps a bit of an extreme solution, but does point out it was software problem, not the hardware. So, get the latest drivers for your devices.
Have you got anything else that can connect to the network via wifi? PSP, phone, Wii - is it just the laptop or everything?
Problems sound so similar you've not got an Advent 7036 have you?

 

[iLB]

no lol, its a dell inspiron 1525 or something like that, are you sure the batteries a gonna, its less than a year old so should be under warranty or something right?

 

[marinyork]

What plan do you have for your dell?

Go on the Dell forum, they've had a lot of problems with wireless network drivers for laptops in the past.

 

[lazyfatgit]

Make sure your router has the latest firmware too. There tends to be several quick fixes issued when hardware is new and sometimes they can sit in a box for a while before being purchased.

 

[Bman]

It may not be the battery thats at fault. If its still under warranty I would get them to check it out.

There is no point to a mains tethered laptop!

 

[Mr Pig]

There is no point to a mains tethered laptop!

They still take up less space.

Batteries are often excluded from warranties as you can kill them, depending on the type, by failing to use them properly. They need to be 'cycled', charged and discharged, and if left empty for long periods they can loose the ability to take a charge at all.