Acer Aspire D250 Charging Problem

I received an Acer Aspire D250 from someone who told me it would no longer charge. They had purchased a new one and said I could have the "broken" old one.

I thought that it could be a problem with the charger, not the netbook itself, so I went to a friend's house to use his charger. Sure enough, it worked like a charm.
I installed Ubuntu on it. Then charging problems returned. (The power fluctuated, lights dimmed, etc, could this have damaged HIS charger too???)

Not sure if the power fluctuation could have damaged the charger, nothing else plugged in was damaged. After doing some googling, I found out it could be because i need to update the BIOS. As luck would have it, I had erased windows, so I had no way of running the BIOS flasher. So, I went to reinstall windows, and the battery ran out halfway through.


The laptop will not charge. The battery light does not light up at all, ever. (the one in the bottom left corner below the keyboard)
The laptop will not turn on while plugged into the wall, without the battery. (this could be a defective charger...??)

In short, what I'm asking is, do these problems seem like hardware issues, or something that could be fixed with a BIOS update????

EDIT: Is there anything i can use to determine if the charger is broken??

 

I have the same problem. But it's weird. Sometimes the battery suddenly works, and it charges and discharges for a few days, then suddenly it stops working and the Acer behaves as if there is no battery attached at all. While the cord is disconnected, there's no light, and nothing happens when I press the power.

It's like there's a bad connection somewhere. But I don't know how to test it. Could be the battery, or maybe the terminals in the Acer.