How can I recalibrate a battery if it keeps shutting down?

vickishome · 05-18-2007, 09:22 PM

I know the problem is with the battery as I have 3 batteries, and it's only happening to 1 of the 3. It's also my newer battery, but I think my habits of plugging and unplugging the charger has really screwed up the calibration.

The problem I'm having is figuring out HOW to get this battery recalibrated.

My PowerBook is model "PowerBook5,8" (aka Double-Layer SD) which requires the same method of calibration as the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. It's explained in the second half of this Apple article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284.

The problem comes in when I'm supposed to drain the battery until it goes to sleep. But it never goes to sleep! It always just stops, forcing a hard shut down.

Given that the instructions said to either let it sleep OR turn off the computer for 5 hours or more, I've tried doing this even though the battery wouldn't go into sleep mode. Result? Battery is still screwed up! It's as if the battery won't recalibrate, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that it's because of the way it always shuts down rather than sleeping.

The shut down is so hard that it's affecting other parts of my PB. One time it corrupted the login preferences so that no matter what I selected (show a list of users or just offer inputs for user and pw), and confirmed that the selection changed in the plist file, the login screen would not change. I finally just trashed that plist and created a new one, and it's been okay since.

But I'm also noticing that the shut downs are causing some of my widgets to disappear. They're still on the hard drive, of course, but they are no longer open in the dashboard screen. This has happened twice. One time, only one of 5 copies of a certain widget disappeared. The second time it happened, three different, random widgets disappeared.

This is concerning me of what else might be happening with these hard shut downs that I haven't noticed yet.

The battery is about 10 months old and has about 315 load cycles. CoconutBattery gives me confusing readings on the battery capacity. It's gone anywhere from around 57% to something in the low to mid 70% range. What's confusing is that the capacity percentage can change for seemingly no reason. One time I unplugged the charger and then plugged it back in, and that alone made CoconutBattery change the capacity from 60% to 74%! Huh?

Plus, the capacity is a sudden jump down from what it used to be. It was 91% on Feb 2. It goes down 9% in 7 months, but suddenly drops another 20%-30% in the following 3 months? That just doesn't make sense to me.

I've been running Sleep Monitor (nice utility, btw), and it's showing quirky things. Like just an hour ago, the battery showed 16% left, but then readjusted itself to 20% for no reason. 12 seconds later, it went down to 19%. About a minute later, I closed my PowerBook and then reopened it 1 minute and 16 seconds later. Now that battery was showing 30% left! Double huh?

11 minutes later, it progressively dropped to 20%, and then it suddenly shut down! Actually, the records show that it went to sleep at 6:58:23 PM, but the very next line shows the battery at 0% at 6:58:24 PM - just one second later. And that's the hard crash that caused 3 of my widgets to disappear.

What can I do with this battery? It's the newest of the 3 and had always been the best, most reliable of the 3 until just recently when this mess started. I'd consider trying to recalibrate the battery repetitively if it wasn't causing corruption with it's hard shut downs. I don't want to buy a new one because I'm hoping to get a MacBook Pro at some point soon, but I'm not sure when.

The calibration is just messed up. How can I get it to recalibrate? Is there anything I can do? Surely, the answer can't be to just give up.

Sorry for the long post, but you guys say you always want detailed information!

seeker777 · 05-18-2007, 10:39 PM

I was experiencing a similar problem with my MacBook Pro when it was relatively new (<6 months). Crazy battery readings, quick changes (eg., from 21% to dead shut off), not going above a reading of 9% (if I recall correctly) no matter how long it was charging for.

Unfortunately, I can not offer any advice on re-calibrating - as I had to have mine done at the Apple Store Genius Bar (luckily under warranty - and according to them, it had more to do with re-setting the battery software than about holding a charge in the battery).

Anyway, I was told that the problem was not plugging and unplugging the charger, but HOW I plugged and unplugged. I was informed to always follow these steps - ALWAYS plug the charger into the outlet BEFORE the computer, and ALWAYS unplug the charger from the computer BEFORE the outlet.

Apparently, if this is not followed, some kind of residual charge may be in the charger when you connect it to the computer (if you did this before plugging into the outlet) which the computer software interprets as the amount of current to base its charging calculations on. Plugging it into the outlet first, before the computer, always puts the correct amount of current through the transformer.

I don't remember ever seeing anything about this prior, but I will say that I have had no problems since following these instructions.

P.S. You mentioned having 315 cycles on the battery. According to Apple published items, the battery is designed to retain 80% capacity after 300 cycles. So maybe you will be able to get the situation fixed without resorting to buying another battery. Good luck.

trevor · 05-18-2007, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vickishome


	What can I do with this battery?

Reset the PMU

Trevor

vickishome · 05-19-2007, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seeker777


	...ALWAYS plug the charger into the outlet BEFORE the computer, and ALWAYS unplug the charger from the computer BEFORE the outlet.

Actually, I HAVE always done it that way instinctively. Plugging stuff into the wall can cause an energy surge that I don't want affecting my PB so I have ALWAYS done it precisely the way you described.

The only exception would be if the power would go out and back on which is not under my control. Here in Texas, we get some powerful electrical storms pass through, and I usually unplug all of my computers and peripherals from the wall. I've seen what happens when lightening hits a house and finds its way through the electrical wiring to the computers. Even though I use Isobar surge protectors that are guaranteed to guard against lightening, I still unplug it all.

But because my PB can travel, I don't always use a surge protector with it. Now I'm trying to remember if it was plugged in when the power blinked off and back on during one of the storms that's passed through this last month. I can't recall it happening, but it is possible as the power has gone off and on at least 3 times this month when I was at a location in which I was not using a surge protector.

Even if that's not the cause, I need to buy a surge protector to take with me. I know better to not use a surge protector. I hope there's a small, travel size isobar available.

Quote:


	P.S. You mentioned having 315 cycles on the battery. According to Apple published items, the battery is designed to retain 80% capacity after 300 cycles. So maybe you will be able to get the situation fixed without resorting to buying another battery. Good luck.

I did buy the extended warranty. I wonder if I'd be so lucky as to have it cover the battery problem as well. After all, it IS screwing up OS X. And it IS a hardware problem. And I'm lucky enough to have an Apple Store in my local mall. And I've been meaning to go there to buy one of the new Airport bases. Hmmm... Thanks for the tip!

Quote:

Originally Posted by trevor


	Reset the PMU

Whoops! I forgot to post that detail. PMU has been reset 3 times already. Absolutely no affect each time I did it. I even used a clock to measure the seconds to be certain I was holding the power button down for precisely 5 seconds. Still no affect on the battery behavior.

But you did remind me of something else I forgot to mention. After the hard crashes, when I power up my PB again, I get a warning that the date is set to (don't remember, but I think it's around 1970?) which might cause erratic behavior. But by the time OS X finishes loading, the time has already reset itself to the correct time. I haven't noticed any harm from this behavior, but that doesn't mean much.

vickishome · 05-19-2007, 03:59 AM

I have a Newer Technology Battery Charger/Conditioner. The 1 page pdf user manual is here. And it's still under warranty.

I wonder what would happen if I used the "deep discharge conditioning" process several times in a row with that battery. I've tried it once, and it didn't fix the problem, but maybe if I do it over and over again, it might help the battery to finally recalibrate?

At the very least, it's something to try that doesn't screw up my system due to hard shut downs.

vickishome · 05-20-2007, 04:35 PM

So much for using the Newer Tech Conditioner doing any good. I did the "deep discharge conditioning" on the battery yesterday. It ran for the 12 hours as it should. I then charged another battery while allowing battery #3 to sit on the desk. I then put battery #3 back and set it to do another "deep discharge conditioning" around 2AM, but when I got up at 10AM this morning, it was already showing to be finished. That's not the 12 hours it's supposed to take. Fine, maybe it won't do it twice in a row. Didn't make logical sense, but at this point, my hopes are beyond logic.

The only way to test the battery is to put it in my PB and see what happens. As it got to 30%, I closed up everything and logged out, logging in to an unused, non-admin account. The battery got to 18% and then the PB shut down.

The Sleep Monitor logs don't even show any attempt for the battery to go into sleep mode (as it did for 1 second in the previous logs). Even worse, it didn't even log the battery at 0% which is always had done before. No logging of shutting down either. This tells me that the shut down was so abrupt that even Sleep Monitor couldn't log anything.

At this point, the battery is too risky to use at all since it's shut downs are too unpredictable and too hard which IS causing damage to my files.

My only hope now is that the Apple Store will be able to fix it like they did with seeker777. Otherwise, it's a doorstop.

trevor · 05-20-2007, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vickishome


	But you did remind me of something else I forgot to mention. After the hard crashes, when I power up my PB again, I get a warning that the date is set to (don't remember, but I think it's around 1970?) which might cause erratic behavior. But by the time OS X finishes loading, the time has already reset itself to the correct time. I haven't noticed any harm from this behavior, but that doesn't mean much.

That would indicate that your PRAM battery is dead. You can buy a new one from iFixit: http://ifixit.com

Trevor

vickishome · 05-20-2007, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trevor


	That would indicate that your PRAM battery is dead. You can buy a new one from iFixit: http://ifixit.com

Dead PRAM battery in only 18 months? Wow, that was fast.

I usually do all of my own hardware repairs, but I draw the line when it comes to laptops. I looked up what it took to replace the PRAM battery. No thank you! This is why I spent the money for the extended warranty for my PB.

Does anyone have any idea how long it takes for an Apple Store to do the repair?

How bad would it be if I kept running my PB with the bad PRAM battery? So far, the only time I can see any signs of an issue is when (the 8 month old probable doorstop) battery #3 does it's instant shut down thing. Otherwise, all is good.

What I'd like to do is wait until I get a new MacBook Pro. 22 more days until the WWDC which is keeping me from buying anything right now. Once I see what Jobs announces, I'll most likely get a MacBook Pro at that point. THAT would mean I can have my PB "in the shop" getting repaired while I still have an Apple laptop as I don't think I can handle the withdrawal pains of not having a Mac with me.

Will that work? Does any see any problems with that plan?

That is, unless someone tells me that the Apple Store will make the repairs while I wait (my dream come true, but unlikely).

DeltaMac · 05-20-2007, 07:09 PM

The time/date likely zero out to defaults when the PMU is reset, and the PRAM battery might not be an issue at this point.
Why not just replace that third battery? If the battery is an Apple battery, then you would be covered by the AppleCare. If it is a third party battery (like Newer Technology), then that should also be a warranty issue with that company.

seeker777 · 05-22-2007, 11:59 AM

Vicki,

RE: Time to repair at Apple Store.

I am a ProCare member, which helps jump the line.

For battery fix, which was reset related, not replacement, they performed the operation while I stood there.

Also had SuperDrive replaced another time due to malfunction. Luckily, they had the part in stock, and completed in approx. 2.5 hours. They said if part had not been in stock, it would take 3 days.

05-18-2007, 09:22 PM	#1
vickishome MVP Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 1,075	How can I recalibrate a battery if it keeps shutting down? I know the problem is with the battery as I have 3 batteries, and it's only happening to 1 of the 3. It's also my newer battery, but I think my habits of plugging and unplugging the charger has really screwed up the calibration. The problem I'm having is figuring out HOW to get this battery recalibrated. My PowerBook is model "PowerBook5,8" (aka Double-Layer SD) which requires the same method of calibration as the MacBooks and MacBook Pros. It's explained in the second half of this Apple article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284. The problem comes in when I'm supposed to drain the battery until it goes to sleep. But it never goes to sleep! It always just stops, forcing a hard shut down. Given that the instructions said to either let it sleep OR turn off the computer for 5 hours or more, I've tried doing this even though the battery wouldn't go into sleep mode. Result? Battery is still screwed up! It's as if the battery won't recalibrate, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that it's because of the way it always shuts down rather than sleeping. The shut down is so hard that it's affecting other parts of my PB. One time it corrupted the login preferences so that no matter what I selected (show a list of users or just offer inputs for user and pw), and confirmed that the selection changed in the plist file, the login screen would not change. I finally just trashed that plist and created a new one, and it's been okay since. But I'm also noticing that the shut downs are causing some of my widgets to disappear. They're still on the hard drive, of course, but they are no longer open in the dashboard screen. This has happened twice. One time, only one of 5 copies of a certain widget disappeared. The second time it happened, three different, random widgets disappeared. This is concerning me of what else might be happening with these hard shut downs that I haven't noticed yet. The battery is about 10 months old and has about 315 load cycles. CoconutBattery gives me confusing readings on the battery capacity. It's gone anywhere from around 57% to something in the low to mid 70% range. What's confusing is that the capacity percentage can change for seemingly no reason. One time I unplugged the charger and then plugged it back in, and that alone made CoconutBattery change the capacity from 60% to 74%! Huh? Plus, the capacity is a sudden jump down from what it used to be. It was 91% on Feb 2. It goes down 9% in 7 months, but suddenly drops another 20%-30% in the following 3 months? That just doesn't make sense to me. I've been running Sleep Monitor (nice utility, btw), and it's showing quirky things. Like just an hour ago, the battery showed 16% left, but then readjusted itself to 20% for no reason. 12 seconds later, it went down to 19%. About a minute later, I closed my PowerBook and then reopened it 1 minute and 16 seconds later. Now that battery was showing 30% left! Double huh? 11 minutes later, it progressively dropped to 20%, and then it suddenly shut down! Actually, the records show that it went to sleep at 6:58:23 PM, but the very next line shows the battery at 0% at 6:58:24 PM - just one second later. And that's the hard crash that caused 3 of my widgets to disappear. What can I do with this battery? It's the newest of the 3 and had always been the best, most reliable of the 3 until just recently when this mess started. I'd consider trying to recalibrate the battery repetitively if it wasn't causing corruption with it's hard shut downs. I don't want to buy a new one because I'm hoping to get a MacBook Pro at some point soon, but I'm not sure when. The calibration is just messed up. How can I get it to recalibrate? Is there anything I can do? Surely, the answer can't be to just give up. Sorry for the long post, but you guys say you always want detailed information! __________________ Vicki • 15" MacBook Pro 2.66GHz i7, Mavericks 10.9.1, 8GB RAM • iPad 4G WiFi 64GB • iPhone 5 64GB • 15" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, Tiger 10.4, 4GB RAM • G5 Dual 2GHz, Panther 10.3, 1.5GB RAM • G4 Dual 1GHz, Tiger 10.4, 1.5GB RAM Using Macs since 1986!

05-19-2007, 03:59 AM	#5
vickishome MVP Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 1,075	I have a Newer Technology Battery Charger/Conditioner. The 1 page pdf user manual is here. And it's still under warranty. I wonder what would happen if I used the "deep discharge conditioning" process several times in a row with that battery. I've tried it once, and it didn't fix the problem, but maybe if I do it over and over again, it might help the battery to finally recalibrate? At the very least, it's something to try that doesn't screw up my system due to hard shut downs. __________________ Vicki • 15" MacBook Pro 2.66GHz i7, Mavericks 10.9.1, 8GB RAM • iPad 4G WiFi 64GB • iPhone 5 64GB • 15" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, Tiger 10.4, 4GB RAM • G5 Dual 2GHz, Panther 10.3, 1.5GB RAM • G4 Dual 1GHz, Tiger 10.4, 1.5GB RAM Using Macs since 1986!

05-20-2007, 04:35 PM	#6
vickishome MVP Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Texas Posts: 1,075	So much for using the Newer Tech Conditioner doing any good. I did the "deep discharge conditioning" on the battery yesterday. It ran for the 12 hours as it should. I then charged another battery while allowing battery #3 to sit on the desk. I then put battery #3 back and set it to do another "deep discharge conditioning" around 2AM, but when I got up at 10AM this morning, it was already showing to be finished. That's not the 12 hours it's supposed to take. Fine, maybe it won't do it twice in a row. Didn't make logical sense, but at this point, my hopes are beyond logic. The only way to test the battery is to put it in my PB and see what happens. As it got to 30%, I closed up everything and logged out, logging in to an unused, non-admin account. The battery got to 18% and then the PB shut down. The Sleep Monitor logs don't even show any attempt for the battery to go into sleep mode (as it did for 1 second in the previous logs). Even worse, it didn't even log the battery at 0% which is always had done before. No logging of shutting down either. This tells me that the shut down was so abrupt that even Sleep Monitor couldn't log anything. At this point, the battery is too risky to use at all since it's shut downs are too unpredictable and too hard which IS causing damage to my files. My only hope now is that the Apple Store will be able to fix it like they did with seeker777. Otherwise, it's a doorstop. __________________ Vicki • 15" MacBook Pro 2.66GHz i7, Mavericks 10.9.1, 8GB RAM • iPad 4G WiFi 64GB • iPhone 5 64GB • 15" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, Tiger 10.4, 4GB RAM • G5 Dual 2GHz, Panther 10.3, 1.5GB RAM • G4 Dual 1GHz, Tiger 10.4, 1.5GB RAM Using Macs since 1986!

05-18-2007, 10:39 PM	#2
seeker777 Triple-A Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Royal Oak, MI U.S.A. Posts: 201	I was experiencing a similar problem with my MacBook Pro when it was relatively new (<6 months). Crazy battery readings, quick changes (eg., from 21% to dead shut off), not going above a reading of 9% (if I recall correctly) no matter how long it was charging for. Unfortunately, I can not offer any advice on re-calibrating - as I had to have mine done at the Apple Store Genius Bar (luckily under warranty - and according to them, it had more to do with re-setting the battery software than about holding a charge in the battery). Anyway, I was told that the problem was not plugging and unplugging the charger, but HOW I plugged and unplugged. I was informed to always follow these steps - ALWAYS plug the charger into the outlet BEFORE the computer, and ALWAYS unplug the charger from the computer BEFORE the outlet. Apparently, if this is not followed, some kind of residual charge may be in the charger when you connect it to the computer (if you did this before plugging into the outlet) which the computer software interprets as the amount of current to base its charging calculations on. Plugging it into the outlet first, before the computer, always puts the correct amount of current through the transformer. I don't remember ever seeing anything about this prior, but I will say that I have had no problems since following these instructions. P.S. You mentioned having 315 cycles on the battery. According to Apple published items, the battery is designed to retain 80% capacity after 300 cycles. So maybe you will be able to get the situation fixed without resorting to buying another battery. Good luck.

05-20-2007, 07:09 PM	#9
DeltaMac League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 8,531	The time/date likely zero out to defaults when the PMU is reset, and the PRAM battery might not be an issue at this point. Why not just replace that third battery? If the battery is an Apple battery, then you would be covered by the AppleCare. If it is a third party battery (like Newer Technology), then that should also be a warranty issue with that company.

05-22-2007, 11:59 AM	#10
seeker777 Triple-A Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Royal Oak, MI U.S.A. Posts: 201	Vicki, RE: Time to repair at Apple Store. I am a ProCare member, which helps jump the line. For battery fix, which was reset related, not replacement, they performed the operation while I stood there. Also had SuperDrive replaced another time due to malfunction. Luckily, they had the part in stock, and completed in approx. 2.5 hours. They said if part had not been in stock, it would take 3 days.