Hi there I have one of these well known Inspiron 1150 poor designed Laptops. Apparently same issues as the 5150's.
So last night I took the whole thing apart looked over MB and put back together (also cut off the tabs on the "C" plate like the 5150's. You could see where they were putting presure on a chip. So after all back together same problems with the hard drive and power leds flashing.
I played around with the pa-10 power pack where the wire that comes from laptop to the power pack looks a little twisted from wrapping aroung power pack like your supposed to do and tie it down. Plugged it into a different outlet (one without a power bar) and WOW charged both batteries no problem and NO flashing lights.
As I am using the 1150 right now (under battery power) to type this all seems GREAT!....WRONG the Ac adapter in not recognized if I choose to go direct instead of battery and IN THE BIOS...Shows AC adapter not recognized. So as long as I can get the batteries to charge (not sure if it was a one shot deal here...we will se when battery dies out and recharge I hope)
WELL for the heck of it I just remembered reading somewhere to hit the Fn + crt/lcd function...while I am typing this...I did so...Plugged in adapter and it is charging battery and detected now????????????
I hope this is all it was...which there are A LOT of complaints regarding this same issue for something like this dumb to be causing it.
STBEAR007