If you don't have access to a multi-meter to test your system, you may want to check the electrical sockets wherever you plug it in. A little portable ground-checker is pretty cheap at home depot and will light up if your outlet is not grounded properly. You'd be surprised how many 3-prong home outlets are not actually grounded properly.

Yes that is a really good idea. Just because you have a 3 pronged plug and outlet, does not mean you are actually grounded. My old apartment only had 3 grounded outlets in it and NONE of them were actually grounded.

Dell just told me to go buy the adapter myself... CHat rep Soma_01119130

I ahve 2 1705's and both are 2 plin adapters... he refused... he also wanted the link to my source of info, but I refused.

oh well.... good thing I jsut spent 300+ on a new 4 yr waaranty that requires me to purchase all my own hardware replacement parts... amazing.

I will try other avenues for my 3 pin adapters. see what happens...

Did that 3 prong cord come with the system? or did you purchase it later?

Dell stated to me that 1705's are not shipped with 3 prong PSU's.

give us a part number bif you could please..thx

Just getting my info straight.

I have the Dell Inspiron 6400 and I just checked for the stray voltage. I found that all but 3 of the screws on the bottom have 55.6V to ground when plugged into an outlet. My computer was shipped out with the 2 prong adapter! I noticed that right away when I opened the box and I thought to myself, why didn't they send out a grounded power supply.....but I thought oh well, until I read this post!

My question is, i've only been using this lappy for about 3 to 4 days, and i've had it plugged in for 2 of those days....Do you think that it has already done some damage on my internal components??? Knowning that pretty much all of the things under the hood of this laptop are rated DC voltage only, and not AC?? If so, would it be worth it to get a replacement from Dell?? I really don't want to send it off and wait another few weeks I just got it and it seemed like an eternity while I was waiting to get it. Just wondering since, i'm not getting the parity error or anything like that, and everything seems to be ok, but! I only have the 1 year warrenty...so i'm a little worried, and I don't want to have it break 1.1 years down the road, and then be out of luck.

So If I were get have dell send out the 3 prong grounded adapter, do you think that everything would be ok? Or do you think that the 56 volts AC has already done some damage on my components? Stressed them and taken a few years off of it's lifespan??

Thanks!

*EDIT* Dell just told me that I would have to purchase my own adapter, that they can not ship me out anything that they didn't originally send out with the laptop at the time of purchase??? How stupid is that...

Yeah they told me the same thing!

When you call Dell explain the problem to them, the fact the laptop is giving off stray voltage on the bottom. Direct them to this thread if they want. I have already given it to them before.
I will try to speak with them on Monday and see what i can get taken care of on this end as well.

He got the laptop from me, and it was a 130w adapater i bought separately to power a 7900 GTX. Got it on ebay for 40 dollars, brand new. I do think though that Dell should be supplying the adapters.

well that makes sense then... When they told me they did not have 3 pin adapters.. I told them to look at the 1710 models... then they told me they do not sell 1710 models...

duh

I then proceeded to inform the chat rep that the XPS is a 1710, he then wanted to transfer me to XPS support.. even though I have a 1705... like XPS support would do anything for a 1705 owner...

oh well.... unresolved issues form here I come.

My personal feeling on this is it is possible that damage has already been done. Damage that you may not see for a long time, or maybe even at all. But it has been done. I can't tell you the number of desktop MB's I have replaced because someone forgot to remove an extra standoff and shorted out part of the board. Which in turn caused a random crash or data corruption.

I do not think any real damage will have been done...there may be the odd occassion where it has damaged a memeory module or even a CPU, but if you dont have anything wrong with your laptop, then it wont have done any damage.

I've been using my Inspiron 9400 laptop for a year now. It's almost always plugged in, and I do not have the grounded power adapter. When I measured with the multimeter I got 135 Volts AC of stray voltage. I still get this on most of the screws under the laptop. Do you guys think the lifespan of my laptop have been drastically decreased?? I haven't one time experienced the NMI error though, luckily...but I guess it's just a matter of time now?

Assuming that some damage has already been done....hopefully not though, how would it even be possible to tell what has been done? Are there some stress tests that will show how much wear there is on a specific part, where you could tell the health of each system? I really don't want to have my laptop break down after the warranty expires....

All this trouble because dell was too cheap to implement a grounding type ac adapter....that should have been required by the NEC or some other standard, grounding is a very serious issue in the electrical field, that should go the same for the electronics field....

Is dell accepting returns for this problem? That is crap if they are pumping out juice through the case, that is a lot of power to be surging through my lap....

Dell has replaced two for me for this problem. Which is how I found out it was a widespread problem. What their stance on it now will be? I do not know.