Laptop charger/battery broken?

[Hess]

When I plug my laptop into the power, the battery light flashes blue, then orange (1-5 times at quick random intervals). I've never seen it go orange before, and when I turn my laptop on, it has the standard dell loading screen for 2-5 seconds then cuts out.

Obviously there's a problem with the power, but how do I know what it is? It could be the battery, the AC adapter, the AC jack, AC circuit board, loose connection, etc.....

On some help sites, people have said to go into BIOS and check if the battery or whatever is recognised, but I can't even get that far without it turning off.

[Bilbo]

If you have a secondary charger available, you could use that to rule out the fault as a faulty charger or a faulty power connector on your laptop.
I doubt it could be the battery's fault, for me the obvious fault would seem to be the charger itself.

[Hess]

The thing is, before this started happening, the battery was fully charged as far as I know. I always have it plugged in when I can.

Unfortunately I don't have a secondary charger that I can use to test the problem.
Post Merge: May 29, 2012, 08:23:58 amI can rule out the battery being the problem. It turns out it wasn't charging when my sister was using it, and then shut itself off when it got low. Hence, why I can still turn it on even when the AC adapter isn't plugged in, as there is still SOME battery power, but not much.

So I guess its either the Charger, or the circuit that the charger plugs into...

I'm leading towards the problem being in the charger circuit board since the charger has a green light which is on if its receiving power, and that light still works.