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Few things with my MB

Krafty

Krafty

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 31, 2007
4,466
343
La La Land
There's a few things my MB does that kinda pisses me off. It's a Sept 06 model, 2GHz Intel Core Duo.

Failure to shutdown; I generally leave my MB on, putting it to sleep when I don't use it. But sometimes when I need to shutdown, restart, or the Software Update needs to restart, either it wont do anything and give me an error, or the menubar, desktop icons dissapear, but the dock doesnt. And it just sits there, and I have to force it to shutdown.

Goes to black screen after logging in from sleep; Sometimes when I wake it up from sleep, and enter the login password, it goes to the desktop and then quickly switches back to black screen with only the mouse visable. I can't do anything, and I have to close the lid and open it again to get the login screen. With that, I have it set so when i move the mouse to the bottom-right corner the screensaver activates, and when this happens i can no longer activate it.

Battery dies at 20-30%; Even though the last time I used it it went to 12% fine, still everyone should know about this problem.

I would take it back to Apple but I know what they're going to say, so is there anyway to fix this on my own?
 
Krafty said:
There's a few things my MB does that kinda pisses me off. It's a Sept 06 model, 2GHz Intel Core Duo.

Failure to shutdown; I generally leave my MB on, putting it to sleep when I don't use it. But sometimes when I need to shutdown, restart, or the Software Update needs to restart, either it wont do anything and give me an error, or the menubar, desktop icons dissapear, but the dock doesnt. And it just sits there, and I have to force it to shutdown.

Goes to black screen after logging in from sleep; Sometimes when I wake it up from sleep, and enter the login password, it goes to the desktop and then quickly switches back to black screen with only the mouse visable. I can't do anything, and I have to close the lid and open it again to get the login screen. With that, I have it set so when i move the mouse to the bottom-right corner the screensaver activates, and when this happens i can no longer activate it.

Battery dies at 20-30%; Even though the last time I used it it went to 12% fine, still everyone should know about this problem.

I would take it back to Apple but I know what they're going to say, so is there anyway to fix this on my own?
Click to expand...

Just a little correction... the late 06 model was Core 2 Duo, not Core Duo.

I have this model and I occasionally have issues 1 and 2. Not sure what causes it :(

Doesn't happen often so it doesn't really piss me off.
 
Problems 1 and 2 happen on my Mac Mini, the tech guys at work seem to think it is a power management issue. I could sometimes resolve the black-screen-with-cursor by pressing the power button to call up the power dialogue and then escaping it.
 
Your battery problem may be caused by the way you recharge it. Rechargeable batteries have something callled "memory". Basically, if you're constantly recharging your battery before it gets under 5%-10% capacity, it will start learning that point as the new bottom. So, if you plug it in every time it gets to 20% (after several times of doing this), then your battery will eventually only have 80% usable capacity. The Mac software will still see the full 100% of battery capacity, so it will never match up.

From what I understand, once a battery develops a memory, it is irreversible. Your only solution might be a new battery. As a recommendation, always run your battery down (say under 5%) before recharging it. The same goes for cell phones, iPods, etc.
 
Try this as a problem #2 fix:

Force quit the program called loginwindow. When you do this, it logs you out and then brings back the login screen so you'll want to close all your other programs beforehand. I usually goto Activity Monitor and find loginwindow in the list and hit the quit button.

When the symptom described in #2 occurs, I think it creates 2 occurrences of being logged in and it messes with sleep and screensaver among other stuff and forcing it to quit usually corrects this. You won't be hurting anything if it doesn't help. -GDF
 
OptyCT said:
Your battery problem may be caused by the way you recharge it. Rechargeable batteries have something callled "memory". Basically, if you're constantly recharging your battery before it gets under 5%-10% capacity, it will start learning that point as the new bottom. So, if you plug it in every time it gets to 20% (after several times of doing this), then your battery will eventually only have 80% usable capacity. The Mac software will still see the full 100% of battery capacity, so it will never match up.

From what I understand, once a battery develops a memory, it is irreversible. Your only solution might be a new battery. As a recommendation, always run your battery down (say under 5%) before recharging it. The same goes for cell phones, iPods, etc.
Click to expand...
That's a common misconception with lithium batteries. Fortunately lithium batteries don't have memories like the older carbon batteries.
 
And it's not good AT ALL to let it go under 5%! It's best to not let it get below 20%.
 
GfulDedFan said:
Try this as a problem #2 fix:

Force quit the program called loginwindow. When you do this, it logs you out and then brings back the login screen so you'll want to close all your other programs beforehand. I usually goto Activity Monitor and find loginwindow in the list and hit the quit button.

When the symptom described in #2 occurs, I think it creates 2 occurrences of being logged in and it messes with sleep and screensaver among other stuff and forcing it to quit usually corrects this. You won't be hurting anything if it doesn't help. -GDF
Click to expand...
Alright, thanks.
 
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