Why cant I power the drill?

Hi @cmackinnon I had this issue awhile back and the cheapest fix is buying a new battery and charger. The problem is either with the charger which you should never mess with them any way but I had a feeling that there was some issues with the charger that I had for 10 years and the power cells on my batteries finally ran out of life because they do have a shelf life but it's a pretty long one if you don't use it much. My suggestion is go lithium ion if you can. If not I am sure dewalt do sell nicad batteries still. I actually just waited for the lithium ion adapter kit to come out for my 18 volt dewalt tools and I am loving it. I did get a defective battery though but I took back to where I bought it from and they replaced with a new battery and the way you know the battery is defective is that it shorts out in bursts. I do warn that if you use the battery in hot weather it can activate the failsafe and do not open the battery up and disable it or you will have the same issue that hoverboards have which is to catch on fire. The way the failsafe works is when the temperature of the battery is to hot it will shut itself off and you have to wait for it to cool and it will work again or if the battery is way to cold and it has to be pretty cold for this to happen. But to prevent damage to the battery the tool companies also have the battery shut of power to drill and it hasn't been much of a issue for me. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment area. I hope this helps. By the way I found out my old charger was done for was by taking it to my local hardware store where the employees tried to charge their batteries on it and it wouldn't charge their batteries either.