ibook battery fails after 5 minutes!!

if it's under warranty get another one
if not i don't think you can do much you might be able to condition the battery but eventually it will fail again

there's an apple knowledge base article on how to reset a battery. i sum up:

- run it all the way to zero
- charge it all the way up

my gut feel is that there is something wrong w/ your battery, though.

Yeah time for a replacement.

Once Li-ion batteries hit the wall time for a replacement. Or take it to a batteris place and have it re-packed.

You could try resetting the PMU on your iBook. Not exactly sure where it's located (It's under the keyboard, at the back right hand corner, on my PowerBook). I was having issues with my battery not charging and the charge light not coming on and stuff, and resetting the PMU worked perfectly.

But yeah, I'm probably gonna have to agree with what everyone else has said - I think your battery's shot.

EDIT: Found the article on AppleCare

Resetting PMU

not so fast

I have had an identical problem as this poster and they are not alone.

It is entirely likely that the battery did die, but it is not clear that simply replacing the batter will fix your troubles.

If you go to Apple's Discussion boards under iBook and see the hundreds of complaint for this exact problem you will realize that there is something fishy going on.

Many people have replaced their batteries after this very problem occured, usually after people upgraded to 10.2.6+. Their new battery soon fails in a similar way.

Naturally, Apple claims ignorance to any glitches or f'ups with the power management or battery killer functions added to their OS upgrades.

I'm not sure how many hundreds need to be affected by this before we* start talking 'class action' to get any support from Apple, but they had better help us soon.

*By "we" I mean that I too have had the indentical problem. I've gone through all the repair and mantainace recommendations from this site and the Apple Discussion Forums, all to no avail.

Is that just an iBook problem? My TiBook has worked fine and I'm using 10.2.8?

Are battery electronics responsible for battery breakdown?

My iBook (500MHz, Dual USB, Combo, 2.5 years old) had the same problem: within 2 weeks battery life dropped down from 1.5hours to 5min, charging would go on for about 10min, then it said "charged". capacity in xbattery would read 68 mAh only (>4000mAh is normal!).

tried resetting power manager unit, resetting nvram, nothing would help. even tried resetting battery's internal power manager by shorting the two outermost contacts (not recommended, battery could explode!). didn't work. so i ordered a replacement battery for 200 swiss francs (about 150$).

after that i decided to open the old battery pack. it is made out of 6 batteries of the panasonic CGR18650A type (3.6V, 2000mAh) connected in a 2 parallel x 3 serial way (giving 10.8V, 4000mAh), plus the internal battery pack electronics.

seemed that a resistor on the battery electronics broke off (don't now whether this came from the dissembling...), maybe this was the actual cause for the battery pack breakdown?

the batteries reminded me of the one used in my MiniDisc-player (Sharp MD-MS200) so i checked the MD-Players battery and it read 3.6V, 1400mAh. tried to use one unit of the iBooky batteries in the MD-player (they're somewhat shorter than the sharp batteries, so i had to use some plied aluminum foil to ensure contact) and it worked! operated it for over 5hours, no heating of the battery nothing unusual, even recharged it once overnight, no problem.

didn't check the other battery units yet, but it seems that rather the battery pack's internal electronics than the actual battery units were broken. so i have 6 functional Panasonic CGR18650A batteries now...anyone interested?

disclaimer: use this information at your own risk!

Just get a new battery.

laytonhayes said:

With an iBook 700 the battery only last for 5 minutes. It shows a full charge and then after 5 minutes the low battery warning comes up, then it shuts down completely, not just falls asleep. I tried the battery in another iBook with the same results. Is there a way to reprogram the battery? I really don't want to buy another battery. Thanks

Click to expand...

I have an iBook 600 and the same thing happened to me. At the same time, my motherboard and my harddrive crapped out on me so I sent it into apple service through an Apple Store.

When I got it back, it had a cool little note taped to it, "Apple has determined that the battery is within specifications and needs to be replaced." So... instead of calling me and telling me I needed a new battery while they had my machine there and could ship it to me, they just sent me a note. Also they forgot to return my power adapter so I had a completely useless laptop for a week or two.

Bottom line, don't waste your time or money with Apple support, just buy a new battery. Oh, and by the way, enjoy the new color, it won't match the white on your computer at all!