Chosen Solution
Macbook 13" late 2008 unibody (Update: Rewrote to put more relevant info first, included additional things I tried.) Late 2008 Macbook Pro unibody (2.4GHz). If I totally power the laptop down (not sleep, total shutdown) and leave it sitting for about a week with the battery in it, the battery drains down to about 10%. If I take the battery out for a week, the battery is at a full charge when I put it back in the laptop. Battery does re-charge, but when I unplug the MagSafe adapter, the battery charging indicator never switches to “on battery”. It continues to show as being connected to the adapter but “Not Charging” (instead of showing as running on battery). Laptop runs fine on the battery with a reasonable life (a few hours), it just seems to never show that it’s on the battery. When this behavior first started I noticed that the light on the MagSafe adapter wouldn’t light for a few minutes; unplugging/replugging would evenutally make it work. I pushed the pins in and out with a toothpick and that seems to not be a problem any longer. UPDATE: I used a multimeter to verify voltage on pins 1-2 and 4-5 on the adapter and it seems to be correct (about 6.85 with no load). This may not be related, but when I powered up the other day the Macbook asked me for my password, though it’s not configured for that. I gave it the correct PW but it just kept asking me for it. I finally powered it down and back up and it started up without asking me for my PW (normal behavior). CoconutBattery shows about 86% health, but the system profiler seems to sometimes have problems fetching the battery info (sometimes shows 0/NULL values for most of the info, sometimes seems okay). I’ve verified that the pins in the adapter move in and out, and I’ve drained/recharged the battery and reset the SMC several times, no change. UPDATE: Reset PRAM, no change. Any other suggestions?
Very perplexing problems. Please have your hard drive backed up before beginning. Time Machine to an external hard drive would be fine. My first guess is a corrupted system folder, possibly some bad blocks but not enough to cause complete start up failure. Start up from your original system installation disk and hold down the “D” key. This will run diagnostic and may give us a clue. If this fails, I would reformat the hard drive and use the “write zeros” option to map out any bad blocks. I would then install a fresh system and see if the problem persists. If the problem is gone, run Disk Utilities of the Time machine backup till it runs clear, then use Migration Assistant to load your old data.
Hi Glenn, Did you ever solve this problem? i have exactly the same mac with exactly the same problem. If I leave the battery in the mac and completely shut down the mac by the next day the battery will be flat. If I leave the battery out of the macbook i can put it in a week later and it functions perfectly. Once the battery has run flat the macbook no longer charges it. The only way to resurrect the battery is to reset the SMC at which point it works as expected until next time its left in my mac.
