As I've previously noted on UT, based on my experience, the Dell laptop battery utility may be corruptible Easy to find cases where it no longer recognizes the Dell AC adapter that came with the machine. So it's certainly possible that it could simply be coming up with bad readings (and acting accordingly) when it should not. I suggest you Google the Dell symptoms and see what others are reporting. I never could solve my battery-util problems once they started -- and, as a result, I will not get another Dell laptop.