MBP Not Charging Properly

Westyfield2 · 5 Feb 2009 at 15:52

As the title says, it's not charging properly.

For the last hour I've just been doing general surfing and word processing, so about 20% processor usage mainly (40% on pages with flash!). When I plugged it in to the mains an hour ago, the orange light came on and it reckoned an hour to charge it. Now it's still orange and reckons it's gonna take 1 hour 47 minutes to charge it.

I'd understand it if I was doing video encoding and was sucking power out quicker than the charger was putting it in, but this is just normal general usage!

Any ideas?
It's an August 2007 MBP 2.4 Santa Rosa.

TY
Ed.

Westyfield2 · 5 Feb 2009 at 16:15

Concorde Rules said:
What % is it at?

Up to 80% its fast charge, after that its slow and takes a while.

It's at 91% (was about 80% an hour ago I think).

Now it reckons it's gonna take 2 hours 12 minutes to charge it, and I'm using a whopping 5% of processing power!

Westyfield2 · 5 Feb 2009 at 16:30

Well that's odd. I just walked away from it for 10 mins, and when I came back and closed the screen-saver it's now saying Charged. :confused:

Westyfield2 · 5 Feb 2009 at 19:03

Cheers guys, I'll do that tonight

Westyfield2 · 6 Feb 2009 at 17:02

LordSplodge said:
I checked Apple's support website and once the computer has entered safe sleep (I.e the battery has gone) you can switch the laptop off (hold down the power button aka the one fingered salute) or let it sleep for five hours.

I'd switch it off.

Well this morning it was saying 10mins of battery left, then it went straight into sleep (so the 10mins was wrong!). It's been sleeping since then........

So I should now just turn it off and do the recharge?

Westyfield2 · 7 Feb 2009 at 18:49

LordSplodge said:
Switch it off. Recharge to full and and then leave on mains for at least two hours once fully charged. Google for MacBook Battery Calibration if you want to see Apple's official document on this.

As for minutes left I don't use that I have mine set to percentage and it normally sits on 0% for a few minutes before doing the Safe Sleep thing.

Did exactly that yesterday, but cheers anyways.

iStat Pro is reporting battery health as being 78%, and I can't remember what it was last time I checked.
Does that sound alright for a 18 month old MBP?

Westyfield2 · 8 Feb 2009 at 15:24

Hmmmm, well Coconut is reporting it as being 19 months old, 87 battery load-cycles and 82% of original capacity (4624MaH vs 5600mAh).........

Westyfield2 · 9 Feb 2009 at 15:25

Hmmm, it's still not happy.

Today I used it for an hour and a half on battery, and it was saying it had an hour left. But it just died there and then. Not the nice gentle going to sleep, a hard power cut. :eek:

(Fortunately I had a recent'ish save of my work).

Four hours later I tried it, and it came with 0% left and Coconut saying 0mAh, and it lasted ten minutes.

Coconut is reporting it as being 54% health (3066mAh vs 5600mAh) :eek:

So, I take it this battery is dead?

It's 19 months old and done 88 cycles, is it going to be covered on my AppleCare?