Dell forum: Studio 1737 Power Issues

On Friday I received a new from the factory Dell Studio 1737 laptop, and it worked great for a couple of hours, but now refuses to turn on.

From a powered off state, it will turn on for about 2-3 seconds. Enough for the touch sensitive LEDs at the top of the bezel area to light up in sequence, and the hard drive to start spinning up. However, before it finishes the POST process, it shuts off again. The display might turn on once every few tries, but generally it seems to shut off just as it's attempting to power up the display. One time I did get it to POST and it said that the battery was critically low, and to hit F1 to continue. Just a plain text message at the top of the screen.

The battery appears to have completely discharged when I left the system unattended the other day reinstalling Windows to remove the crap installed at the factory I didn't want. Since then I have been unable to charge it back up.

I thought maybe it was the battery at first (9-cell "extended") but removing the battery from the system and attempting to power up via the AC adapter doesn't do anything. What's more, is the blue LED ring around the end of the AC adapter that plugs into the laptop itself, is pulsing rather than steady. It's considerably fainter when not plugged into the laptop, but it is still pulsing even then. When plugged into the laptop, the power LED also pulses at a slow rate.

I've done all the usual... Plug it into a known good outlet, make sure there's no power strips or UPS between the adapter and the outlet, I've even tried outlets on a completely different circuit in the house. Same results everywhere.

This all leads me to believe that I got a bum AC adapter, and being a Dell certified tech, I've already put in a WPD request for a new AC adapter. However, that request won't likely be processed until Monday, and then the part won't likely get to me until at least Tuesday.

So, I'm looking for any suggestions people can come up with for things to try in the mean time. I unfortunately don't have access to another AC adapter. If there's a faster option than waiting for WPD to process my request on Monday, I am all ears.