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Awkward battery indication...any ideas?

P

Parsec

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 24, 2007
101
9
N53 E004
Hi,

Recently I've noticed some erroneous battery status indication. It will occasionally (becoming more frequent) show that the battery is charged while I've removed the battery (so it shows an installed battery while there is none). Sometimes when the battery is halfway drained, the system will say that it is still charged (battery led-indicator halfway, usage of laptop on battery-only on par with indication) and then when connected to power, the indicator in OSX remains on 'Charged' (MagSafe orange confirms that it is charging).

To me it seems that the hardware knows the actual state of the battery, but somehow the info doesn't get to OSX.

I don't know how to reset the process that is responsible for battery reporting. Only a reboot will alleviate the issue. What to do?

Even the terminal command: 'ioreg -w0 -l | grep Capacity' shows erroneous information.

Any help would be greatly appreciated (no...it is not a recalibration issue as the system will show that the battery is charged while it is actually removed instead of showing that there is no battery installed).
 
Last edited:
Mal said:
You need to calibrate your battery. There's a nice document on Apple's Support site about how to do that: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1490

jW
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response. I am fully aware of the calibration procedure and have done them numerous times before. Believe me, this isn't a mere calibration problem. Otherwise there would not be a battery percentage showing while there is no battery in the computer.

I've stated the first line wrong, I meant to say that the system will show the battery as being fully charged while it is removed. Normally, it would show that there is no battery installed. Hence, this is more than a calibration problem. I will edit my question to reflect this post.
 
Sorry, forgot that point. Not sure then, I'll let others chime in with their solutions.

jW
 
So, I've turned off the machine, cut power and removed the battery for a minute or so. So far, the problem has not occurred again. But it's only been a few days. Hopefully it will stay away. If not, I probably need to reset the SMC.

Thanks for the help :)
 
So far so good, so I think the issue is resolved after taking away all power after shutdown.
 
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