Water meets MacBook, battery stops working

I dont think anyone can give you a specific answer without knowing what exactly got wet. Could be the battery, could be the connections to the battery, or it could be the board that has been damaged.

You are probably going to have better luck having it looked at and they can tell you exactly what the machine needs. Anyone here would be speculating.

I'll speculate

There is a chip in the battery which monitors its status & keeps it safe. It talks to the main Mac logic board.

Battery not recognised probably means that the battery chip is fried, or that it has made the battery commit suicide since it judged it to be unsafe. ie you need a new battery.

possibly there is a problem on the Mac's main logic board, which means it can't talk to the battery properly. If everything else works OK this seems quite unlikely. I hope so, logic boards are expensive compared to batteries.

Even if the water damage was a few days ago you should go through the steps in the guide - it will take many days for water to evaporate out of your Mac. During that time you could do more damage if you use it.

You can get cheap batteries off eBay or Amazon, expensive ones from Apple. I'm not sure whether there is any difference in quality.


You could also look in System Profiler under Power, post all the info on here and we'll take a look.

It might be that battery connector end got wet, or some of the high power wiring goes near that end. Looking at my Whitebook the battery connector is kind of under the coin lock thing on the base. If that was the case the battery terminals might have shorted out. I understand that the battery logic programmed to commit suicide in such a case, since a shorted out battery can explode on recharging.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com, is a good read if you are interested.

The battery information seems to indicate that it recognises a battery device is connected (ASMB013) but that it refuses to charge it and the capacity is 0. Kind of consistent with the idea above.

Remember everything I've said is speculation - it's possible that if you get a new battery
(a) it won't solve your problem, it will still fail to charge, or worse
(b) there is still a short circuit inside the Mac, the new battery will immediately commit suicide as well.

I don't see how you can eliminate these possibilities without taking your Mac apart or paying Apple $$$$ to do it. My suggestion would be to buy the cheapest battery you can off Amazon or Ebay. You could of course borrow a friend's, but there is a (small?) chance you might kill it in line with (b) above

Finally, the area which got wet is where the hard disk is. It sits behind the sleep light. There is a strong possibility you got the hard disk wet. You might want to think very hard about your backup strategy, especially in the next few weeks.

An Apple Store would really be helpful, because it might not be the battery, but the receptors around the battery, so you could order a new battery only to have the same problem.

@ Astral Cars

It sounds like my speculation was wrong. Perhaps your battery is OK, it's the connection to the Mac that is iffy.

"Charging: Yes" and "Amperage (mA): 2621" on your status panel means that some juice is going into the battery. You might have to leave it for several hours before anything exciting happens. Eventually the "Charge remaining (mAh): 0" number should change up from zero.

Good advice to take it to an Apple store if you can. Free advice there if you can book an appointment.

It sounds like the Mac and the battery can communicate, only intermittently. You may have water, or corrosion, on the contacts. I would take the battery out, have a GOOD look inside. Any water at all? Any sign that water was there before? Leave Mac & battery in a warm place overnight to dry. Possibly longer. Also have a GOOD look at the battery contacts. They should be shiny metal on Mac & battery. If you can any gunk on the connectors, you can clean them with something non-metallic (eg a wooden or plastic toothpick). Unplug the Mac first.

I would hold off buying a new battery until the situation has settled down and the Mac has decided once and for all whether it believes in the battery or not.

"Also, what would you say the likelihood is that if the hard drive has shown no issue so far that it might still having a problem waiting to present itself". I don't know. But look at it the other way round. Hard drives die, it's a common failure. Your HDD is probably 2-3 years old now. What is your plan for WHEN (not if) it dies? The water can't have made the HDD any healthier, it's probably nearer death than it was before the water. Of course it depends on what's on your HDD. If it's easy to replace stuff then you can be relaxed. But it you would miss it, I really would walk into a computer store and buy a portable hard disc and start backing up every night.