Greg Hewgill (ghewgill) wrote,
Greg Hewgill
ghewgill

macbook battery problems

My nearly-year-old MacBook recently started having what seems to be battery issues, after installing the latest Tiger update (10.4.11). The other day I installed the updates with the mains power plugged in, and everything seemed fine. Then yesterday I removed the mains power and was running on battery for about half an hour. Suddenly, poof the screen went black and the computer was off (at the time the battery indicated about 4 hours remaining). It came up just fine while still on battery, so it didn't seem to be a complete discharge issue.

Google quickly found for me a discussion thread about what seems to be this very issue. That thread pointed to the Apple MacBook Battery Update page which indicates that I may be able to get a new battery out of this.

Meanwhile, I'm trying one of the other recommendations in that thread. The BatteryUpdater.bundle on my machine was at version 1.3. This may have been installed by the latest update; I have no way of telling. Anyway, I dragged it to the Trash, rebooted, emptied the trash, then ran System Update again which installed Battery Updater 1.2. I then switched to battery power for a while and sure enough, about half an hour later the machine spontaneously shut down. Finally, I reset the SMC and—cross fingers—I have been on battery for two hours without any shutdowns.

Update: After nearly three hours, my MacBook shut down again. I'm going to pursue the battery replacement route.
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