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2011 MacBook Pro Not Charging

S

SRASC

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 1, 2012
79
2
Trinidad & Tobago
My MacBook Pro stopped charging overnight. When you check the battery status it says “Not Charging”, the MagSafe light is green.

Tried resetting the SMC several times, nothing

Tried cleaning the MagSafe port, nothing

Tried using another MacBook Pro charger, nothing

Tried swapping the plug-in point, nothing

Anyone got any other suggestions?

Thanks.
 
They wear out, never was a super-reliable connector.

People say unplugging the battery and plugging it back in can sometimes fix this. You have to be very careful with those old cables.

I doubt my own experience will help, since it doesn't go beyond the most obvious steps, but when mine stopped charging while still showing the green light, I was able to move the plug around in the jack to a spot where it would start charging, the light would change to orange, and then it would work normally until it got jostled the wrong way again. After several unwanted shutdowns from it stopping charging while still showing the green light I finally taped the MagSafe cable to the side of the machine so it wouldn't move so much, and haven't had much trouble since.

The moral of that story would be that what you describe can be caused by a loose connection at the port, as you already know. If you can't reestablish a good connection by moving the plug around, though, that wouldn't help much.

What's swapping the plug-in point?
 
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Try coconut battery, see how many charges the battery has. It could be on its way out. Sometimes you can turn the machine off, and clean out the MagSafe port. I used an eraser on the charred parts of mine, worked OK for a while longer.
 
SRASC said:
My MacBook Pro stopped charging overnight. When you check the battery status it says “Not Charging”, the MagSafe light is green.

Tried resetting the SMC several times, nothing

Tried cleaning the MagSafe port, nothing

Tried using another MacBook Pro charger, nothing

Tried swapping the plug-in point, nothing

Anyone got any other suggestions?

Thanks.
Click to expand...


Try replacing MagSafe adapter, may be that could be the culprit.
 
Sanpete said:
They wear out, never was a super-reliable connector.

People say unplugging the battery and plugging it back in can sometimes fix this. You have to be very careful with those old cables.

I doubt my own experience will help, since it doesn't go beyond the most obvious steps, but when mine stopped charging while still showing the green light, I was able to move the plug around in the jack to a spot where it would start charging, the light would change to orange, and then it would work normally until it got jostled the wrong way again. After several unwanted shutdowns from it stopping charging while still showing the green light I finally taped the MagSafe cable to the side of the machine so it wouldn't move so much, and haven't had much trouble since.

The moral of that story would be that what you describe can be caused by a loose connection at the port, as you already know. If you can't reestablish a good connection by moving the plug around, though, that wouldn't help much.

What's swapping the plug-in point?
Click to expand...

What I meant by “swapping the plug-in point” is where I plugged in the laptop. Like which wall socket. Just for mentioning sake the one I am charging my iPhone off of now is the one I was using to charge the MacBook off of (I normally charge the iPhone through the MacBook).
 
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profcutter said:
Try coconut battery, see how many charges the battery has. It could be on its way out. Sometimes you can turn the machine off, and clean out the MagSafe port. I used an eraser on the charred parts of mine, worked OK for a while longer.
Click to expand...

Yea, long have coconutBattery. The last check said it has 120 cycles on it.

Yup, also tried cleaning out the MagSafe
226829cc63678b4a6ed97642c3b2850e.jpg


Also checked the pins. Look fine. Compared to another one for a 2012 as well.
 
Wow, that is odd. Quite a stumper. So it just never charges, even though the charger lights up green? Is it really not charging, I mean is the percentage constantly going down on the battery? Only thing I can think of is either software or some kind of logic board fault.

That said, could you try booting off of another drive, just in case it’s an OS problem?

Oh wait! I know! You said it had 112 charges? When did you replace the battery? Sounds like a problem with the battery itself, either it’s a 3rd party incompatibility, or it’s just old.
 
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profcutter said:
Wow, that is odd. Quite a stumper. So it just never charges, even though the charger lights up green? Is it really not charging, I mean is the percentage constantly going down on the battery? Only thing I can think of is either software or some kind of logic board fault.

That said, could you try booting off of another drive, just in case it’s an OS problem?

Oh wait! I know! You said it had 112 charges? When did you replace the battery? Sounds like a problem with the battery itself, either it’s a 3rd party incompatibility, or it’s just old.
Click to expand...


Until Saturday overnight it was fine. It was losing charge while plugged in slowly, over the course of days from 100 to 95%. When it dropped below 95 it accelerated to over the course of hours to 19% where it is now.

I don’t know how much it means but I did an Apple Hardware Test (saw it testing the logic board specifically) & eventually came up with no faults.

7981b8ad5fb5e58f16030e55445b9518.jpg


Never replaced the battery. This is the original battery the laptop came with.

Now tried opening it up and disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. Took the opportunity to clean up inside while I was at it. A little dusty, not too bad.

faf4243de598efde7bf6abee8ab31fe2.jpg


Put everything back together, did another SMC reset, said a prayer & hoped for the best.

It didn’t happen.

——

Also included a screenshot from coconutBattery that I forgot earlier

30efa41977a9b3c78dabaf5c8073a35a.jpg
 
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Looks like it's charging, however at a very low rate. Battery is pretty much done on my 2011 15" MBP, it still charges and has no indication of swelling. After a few gentle cycles of dropping & charging it came back up to 65% of design capacity.

Similar it's an old notebook with mileage so could expire at any time, 13" I expect it to be charging at a far higher wattage. Just flipped my 2014 13" to batter and will let it drain down some so can post more accurate values under charge.

FWIW 2014 13" MBP 2.8 i5, battery rundown to 60% charges at 27W, discharged to less than 20% I'd expect close to double the wattage.

Q-6
 
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If you know someone local with the same kind of MagSafe, try using their adapter/cable to see if that's the problem. I replaced mine because the cable sheath was failing, but it didn't fix this problem, which is probably from physical wear to the port.

I'm still using my original battery, but I don't use it for anything more than keeping the machine asleep in transport. (Wouldn't trust it to run the machine for more than a minute or two.)
 
might go into the mighty System Preferences -> EnergySaver -> Battery and set "dim display with battery power". Now plug the charger in and display brightness should give some hint if it is connected.

power up the unit in "safe mode" just see if makes a difference.

-there is a moderate amount of current going through very thin contacts, just saying over 11years your contacts may have burned up
-2011 was a long time ago. Even if you have a new battery it could have sat in a warehouse too long before you bought it.
 
Sanpete said:
If you know someone local with the same kind of MagSafe, try using their adapter/cable to see if that's the problem. I replaced mine because the cable sheath was failing, but it didn't fix this problem, which is probably from physical wear to the port.

I'm still using my original battery, but I don't use it for anything more than keeping the machine asleep in transport. (Wouldn't trust it to run the machine for more than a minute or two.)
Click to expand...

Yup, tried that. Same result, goes straight to green. No charge.
 
jeyf said:
might go into the mighty System Preferences -> EnergySaver -> Battery and set "dim display with battery power". Now plug the charger in and display brightness should give some hint if it is connected.

power up the unit in "safe mode" just see if makes a difference.

-there is a moderate amount of current going through very thin contacts, just saying over 11years your contacts may have burned up
-2011 was a long time ago. Even if you have a new battery it could have sat in a warehouse too long before you bought it.
Click to expand...

I believe I’ve already had that set in regular use. Unfortunately right now I can’t really verify or experiment because the battery is < 20% at this point. (No clue where it is currently but likely still draining).
 
I’m looking at getting it replaced but the only thing that has me concerned about going down that route is that macOS reports the battery is normal, but it’s better to try something than nothing at this point since I think I’ve gone through all the possible problems/solutions.
 
Now thought of this. If (well when) the battery reaches 0% it should be able to run off of AC power only right?

If so it isn’t as urgent a situation for me but one I’d rather see about sooner than later.
 
If the battery dies, your machine will only run at half speed. It becomes a real dog. Believe me, I've used one running this way. It's painful.
 
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You seem to have eliminated everything outside, including the parts of the pins that are visible, and your battery seems to be in better shape than mine. I suspect the part of the port that's inside or the cable from it. The best next place to check about this is at ifixit, if you haven't tried there yet.

Hard on your battery to take it down to zero, so I'd avoid it if possible.
 
time to retire the 2011 MB?
if so buy a used 2015 MBP with a SSD. Any newer and the the quality level decays, price goes up.

i had an issue that the power pins on the MB side were all decayed eaten up. you said you inspected these.
 
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i think its better to buy new machine. 2011 version seems older. Even if you are succesful with charging, even then it may fail again after few days. Its quite painful since i faced this exact same issue in MBP 2015 for almost 2 months. I did 1000 times of SMC reset and at the end of the day, replaced my MagSafe adapter which was the real culprit. Its been 1 complete year now and no charging issue reported so far :)

Besides, new IOS updates will not be received in your machine i suppose. You can go for refurbished MBP 2015 model if you have limited budget.

Otherwise spend 2600 USD and go for MBP 16"
 
Tried disconnecting the battery & connecting the adapter to see if it would power up. It did. So it may narrow out the logic board from what I’ve read.

As far as going with a new MacBook the choices, for me, aren’t as easy as they were when I got this 2011.

At this point I prefer more storage than the speed so HDD over SSD (mostly because of the cost/GB) & Apple eliminated all their HDD options & I would of course prefer to get one with more storage than I have now (320GB) because of my media being stored locally.

Then there’s the port situation with just 2 USB-C vs all the ones I have now. Either way I would have to get a dongle to continue to manage my iPhone from it.

I most likely would have to bite the bullet and get the new MacBook Air & upgrade the storage later on.
 
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