Few weeks back my sisters Dell Notebook (Inspiron 1525) did not keep up system time and hence approached Dell Support. As per instructions given by their engineer she had downloaded BIOS 16 Upgrade and have run it. After this the system was not even able to boot. It gave the message “Time-of-day clock has stopped”. When asked to solve this issue Dell sent a quotation for Rs. 17,900 for repairs (motherboard replacement) without any diagnosis of the Laptop. This was crazy as the Laptop itself costed only 40k. When googled on the net we found that the problem was common in Dell Inspiron 1525 and can be changed by replacing the CMOS battery. We found that the amount charged for replacing a CMOS battery was exorbitant. After many calls and emails to several Dell officers including Michael Dell the engineer finally replied providing a quote for Rs. 1364 for services related to replacing the coin cell battery. However the coin cell battery was not in scope and had to be sourced by us. Again frustrations started as he refused to provide the specifications for the battery. We almost concluded to shelf the laptop and wanted to finally give a try ourselves. The procedure to replace the battery was provided in Dell Website (http://supportapj.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ ins1525/en/SM/coinbatt.htm#wp1179949). If you would try this procedure you would get frustrated for having to disassemble the whole laptop for replacing a simple coin cell battery. Our first attempt did fail as we tried as per the procedure. Frustrated in the second attempt we bypassed the procedure and just pried up the plastic nearby the keypad and removed the cell with the help of a pin. After seeing the battery I was a bit doubtful if it were proprietary. When enquired in a near by electronics shop we found that the battery was so common that he removed one from a strip just like one would remove one from a strip on ‘pan parag’. IT COSTED ONLY 15 RUPEES!! and for this 15 rupee cell Dell created Hell. We replaced the cell with our short cut technique. At last it Worked. For a 15 rs. battery a 18k quote from Dell, One month downtime, mental trouble and of course have to send emails to dells top brasses. Nothing is as good as self help.
michael_dell@dell.com
donald_carty@dell.com
ronald_garriques@dell.com
michael_cannon@dell.com
mark_jarvis@dell.com
lawrence_tu@dell.com
susan_sheskey@dell.com
andrew_esparza@dell.com
paul_bell@dell.com
stephen_felice@dell.com
david_marmonti@dell.com
brad_anderson@dell.com
jeffrey_clarke@dell.com
martin_garvin@dell.com
alex_gruzen@dell.com
joan_hooper@dell.com
alan_g_lafley@dell.com
william_gray@dell.com
judy_lewent@dell.com
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