Base no longer working. Unit is plugged in.

hi there more often than not phones like your Bt4500 have a battery that's installed inside the handset, now after long charge times and the handset being plugged in the base the battery becomes lifeless and faulty and dies, once a power cut happens as the handset has no longer got power the battery can not recover ! my best advice would be to open the back of the handset and locate the battery and replace with same from mapplins or ebay and give new battery a good charge this should get your phone working again

I had this happen suddenly on 2 out of 3 handsets with a DS6151 base and DS6101 handsets. Well, what happened is there was no dial tone on either of the 2 handsets on either of the 2 lines and a message appeared on the display "Unable to Call Try Again" after some delay, if Line1 or Line2 button was pressed.

Oddly, the 2 that did not work were the ones normally on "extension" chargers and the 1 that did work was the one on the base unit. That caused me to suspect the base unit .. which it still may have been but the solution was NOT. And, also odd, the handsets seemed to still be synched with the base unit in many respects.

Cycling the power on the base unit did nothing.
These are fairly new units and battery life is generally much longer in my experience.

The Solution:
- Remove the battery from the handset that doesn't work properly.
- Re-install the same battery.
Whatever was wrong, this reset it and the handsets started working again.
Easy fix.

what did you end up doing? i have the same problem.

Wilson - The phone was not made to use regular (AAA) batteries. Unless you install AAA NIMH rechargeables it will not work. Regular AAA batteries cannot be charged by the base unit.
In case you meant AAA NIMH batteries as "ordinary batteries" then your charger may be the problem, but I wouldn't assume that until I've taken a pencil eraser and vigorously cleaned the base contacts and tried the base again (with the right batteries.)
Good Luck, Mikeywaf

Try unplugging the base unit and removing the batteries from all the handsets. Then put the batteries back in and plug in the base unit to see if that resets everything.

Try a new battery. That is usually what "88" means.

my base unit did the same.... power from the wall was out ... check GFI switch.

Have strangely got the same problem - about the same time you posted this, but intermitently. I have isolated that the problem is in fact the handset itself, not the base unit. I eliminated a problem with the base unit by a) registering a different DECT phone to it. - The base still works fine. b) Leaving the handset switched off for an hour or so (press and hold the "OK" botton to switch off / on); then whislt it was working, registering the handset to a different base (Base 2). And guess what, after 30 mins the "BASE 2" message started flashing on the faulty handset.
So, if you already have an A110 extension handset, make sure it's also registered to base 1 and maybe try to get just the handset repaired via VTECH. (or just buy a new handset if they are available).

You need to register the unit it will work:
1. Make sure the Base Unit is switched on and has a Green light showing.
2. Unplug everything connected to the Base Unit sockets (you will reconnect them later).
3. Plug the Extension Unit into a power point near the Base Unit, switch on the power and watch the light on the Extension Unit.
4. If the light on the Extension Unit is not glowing a steady Red then the Extension Unit must first be deregistered. Follow Step A and Step B in
the Deregistering an Extension Unit box below then try to register the Extension Unit again.
5. Plug one end of a supplied line cord into to either socket on the Base Unit and plug the other end into the extra Extension Unit
(This cord is used to do the actual registering).
6. The light on the Extension Unit will glow Red for up to a minute and then change to Green or Yellow.
7. Once you have the Green or Yellow light on the Extension Unit, unplug the line cord between the Base Unit and the Extension Unit
(You can unplug the Extension Unit – it will remember being registered).
8. Plug in everything that used to be connected to the Base Unit sockets.
9. Install the extra Extension Unit as per the Extension Unit Installation steps on the other side of this page.

This exact thing happened to me. Same model number. No matter what I did, the new handsets would not register.

The solution? Reset the entire system:
1. On the BASE - Unplug from wall both power and phone line. Unplug battery from base handset.
2. ON the Extension phone - unplug from wall and unplug battery from handset.
3. Wait AT LEAST 5 minutes.
4. Plug back in BASE power.
5. Plug back in BASE phone line.
6. Plug back in EXTENSION handset battery. Don't plug in BASE handset yet.
7. Follow steps to program EXTENSION. When successful:
8. Plug back in BASE handset battery.