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Did 10.2.3 Ruin my Battery? Battery "Crashes"

O

Other.au

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 20, 2004
73
0
Sydney Aus
Sorry for repost - couldnt change orginal title of thread during repost.

Lol - as i was writting this post - my battery was running on self power after having done a power recalibration. Lasted 5 minutes. CRASH.

My battery is irratic. After just 13 months my battery acting up.

I heard rumours that update 10.2.3 damaged certain powerbook batteries. Many recorded irratic battery behaviour after installing the update. I.e. soon after installing the update their batteries deteriorated at a rapid pace and within a few weeks their batteries "died".
----------

This is the current state of my battery.

1. Battery is at 96%
2. 10 minutes later - no change in battery level.
3. Then - Comp crashes. Skips sleep altogether.
4. Plug in power cable - grey lines run down the screen
---------

If the power cable is plugged in i dont expirience any of these problems. These "grey lines" only appear after a battery crash.

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I am an expirience mac user and know how to treat a battery. I.e. dont charge it up from halfway. Run the battery down before charging it up. I have tried a number of things including power calibration and all the advice on the apple website.

Is this normal behaviour?
Is this due to 10.2.3?
Is it a problem with the battery?
What can be done?
 
Other.au said:
I have tried a number of things including power calibration and all the advice on the apple website.
Click to expand...

So - in answer to your question - Yes I have tried recalibrating my battery.
 
You don't say, but did you ever actually have the 10.2.3 update installed? Obviously, if you didn't, then that wouldn't be the problem.... Plus I would think that you'd have had problems long before now, if that was the cause.

You could try zapping the PRAM (Command-Option-P-R on startup), and then re-calibrating the battery. I don't think this would change anything, but it's worth a shot and won't hurt anything. Or try resetting the Power Manager (see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449), which probably has a better chance of actually doing something (since the PM handles battery charging, among other things). To avoid wierdness from the PM, always plug the power adapter into the wall before plugging it into the 'Book - this keeps the PM much happier. If you had another 'Book around to test it in, that would give conclusive proof of whether it was the battery or not. I think the battery may simply be gone at this point, though....

And now, a public service announcement:
It's best to NOT fully discharge the battery every time you use it if you don't have to. There's no reason to do so with any modern (or even not so modern) batteries. It only shortens their life by doing so. For example, a battery may be able to last for 200 partial discharges, but only 100 full discharges. Of course, the occasional full discharge is good to recalibrate the charging system, and will help the battery last longer overall (batteries don't over or undercharge that way), but it doesn't need to be done that often. This business that rechargeable batteries need to be fully discharged to keep working at their full capacity is an urban myth.
 
Is this battery behaviour normal? (for a battery probably near death)

----

Ive already tried the things mentioned.... unfortunatly. What i find most stricking tho is the rate whereby my battery deteriorated. It was very sudden in my opinion.

I expected a slower process whereby everytime the battery would have less and less charge with use. THis was more of a jump.
 
Other.au said:
Is this battery behaviour normal? (for a battery probably near death)

----

Ive already tried the things mentioned.... unfortunatly. What i find most stricking tho is the rate whereby my battery deteriorated. It was very sudden in my opinion.

I expected a slower process whereby everytime the battery would have less and less charge with use. THis was more of a jump.
Click to expand...

You are describing almost exactly what has happened to the battery in my G3 Powerbook after I performed the lasted update of Panther. Within a couple of days my battery life went from a highly respectable 45 minutes (not bad for a three year old battery) to a situation where the battery charge would decrease at normal rate until approx. 50% capacity and would then apparently 'crash' without the battery-level dialogue box appearing, and the laptop would simply turn itself off. The problem has now become worse and the battery won't charge at all, so it has to remain plugged in at all times. I, too, have performed the suggested operations on the Apple support site, but to no avail. I suspect (but can't confirm) that it has something to do with the OS update. Just wish I knew what - all very strange

Not really as worried as I should be though as my new G4 Powerbook is scheduled to be delivered this afternoon, although I'd like to keep the G3 running within the network. Sorry I couldn't shed any new light on the situation, but take solace in the fact you're not the only one.

Best of luck with it.

A
 
A little more evidence would be good.

So u had problems with the latest version of panther? Hmmm. I thought 10.2.3 might have been a little too long ago to be the root of the problem.

Im going to ring up apple after i have some more info. See what the deal is. But i aint going to do so unless i am able to state a fairly solid case.
 
Another person reporting similar problems:

http://www.kottke.org/02/11/ibook-power-problems

My iBook has picked up a distressing habit here in Paris. Whereas it lasted three or more hours on the battery prior to last week, it now only goes for about forty minutes to an hour. I haven't modified any of the Energy Saver settings or changed my usage pattern at all. The battery says it's fine, getting down to about 65% full and then it just sleeps. When I plug it in and wake it up, it says the battery is at 0% (and charging slow as hell). I guess a trip to the Apple store is in order when I get to NYC because a laptop that's not portable is just a paperweight.


Update: I reset the Power Manager as several people suggested. No dice.
 
Other.au said:
A little more evidence would be good.

So u had problems with the latest version of panther? Hmmm. I thought 10.2.3 might have been a little too long ago to be the root of the problem.

Im going to ring up apple after i have some more info. See what the deal is. But i aint going to do so unless i am able to state a fairly solid case.
Click to expand...

yes, for me the problem came with Panther 10.3.4. Before that upgrade everything was perfect.

I wish I could be more help.

Good luck with Apple.

A
 
Other.au said:
I am an expirience mac user and know how to treat a battery. I.e. dont charge it up from halfway. Run the battery down before charging it up.
Click to expand...

Lithium ion batteries don't have the so-called "memory effect" that the old Ni-Cd batteries had, so you should no longer be concerned about running down a battery before charging.

As for you problem, batteries do die but you should try to make sure its the battery. Do you have another battery (say from a friend) that you can test to make sure your laptop is fine.
 
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