ibook battery woes

[gutterflowerjc]

Hi, I need some help to decide if my beloved iBook needs yet another motherboard replacement. It has been sent off a total of three times, once for a repair, a second because the company didn't fix it the first time, and a third for more problems. Here is my current problem:

--- Battery shows up in finder, and it currently at 91% charge. according to istats, I am at 87% health, and 131 cycles. About 3 weeks ago, my battery was at 19%, (The battery has been very flaky for a while now) and it charged (Very slowly) over the course of three days, to 99% and stopped, this was great for me, as I was going on a trip. The battery lasted about four hours on the trip, and charged very well once we arrived at the hotel.

Keep in mind that this is my aunt's old ibook, and the battery was even more finicky for her, but I had just put a new HD in the ibook, and possibly rattled something around that could help it.

As of recent, the battery charged to the 91% and the computer recognizes it, however, as soon as I unplug it, the computer dies instantly. Last night however, I had the ibook on my sofa when the icon changed, and instead of the battery having a little plug-in on it, it now had the lightning bolt on it. I unplugged the computer, and low and behold, it held the charge! I didn't need it to be on the battery at that time, so I plugged it back in, after setting it on my desk, and the icon changed back to the plug-in, and the computer has yet to function without the power supply once more.

My question is:
Do I need a new battery, or just a new logicboard?

ANY help is appreciated so very much,

A student in need
-Jordan

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

You can check out this page to see if your battery qualifies for the battery recall exchange program (click here). Worth a few minutes of your time to see if you can get a new battery.


Have you reset the PRAM? That can possibly help with your battery charging problems. Try holding , Option, P, R when you start it up and hold it for a few minutes until
the computer restarts a few times. Let us know how it goes.

 

[gutterflowerjc]

The weirdest thing...

After I posted my problem, the batery charged up to 100% and is working OK for now -knocks on wood-

Weird....

 

[krye]

My 2c:

I wouldn't put any more money into an "old iBook". I'd throw it on eBay with a disclaimer. Get what you can, and buy a MacBook.

 

[FadeToBlack]

I'm having issues with my iBook's battery and rather than starting a new thread, I figured I'd post in this one.

I bought a new power adapter for it directly from Apple because the one that came with it (a MaCally) had a short in it somewhere and was a bit finicky.

Well, I got the new adapter and it was working fine, but then earlier today, I noticed that the indicator in the menu bar said "battery is not charging" and it was stuck at 95%. Well, I reset the PMU and it was still doing that, so I restarted again and now it says it's charging, but appears to be stuck at 99%.

Okay, oddly enough, after I typed that, it changed over to 100%.

Do you guys think the issue is just a bug in Leopard or is it a hardware issue? (The battery or the power supply?)

The indicator in the menu bar just seems to be inaccurate and when it said "battery is not charging," it really scared me. I really hope this is just a bug in Leopard and not a hardware issue.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[gutterflowerjc]

Happens to me...

That happens to me all the time, not the "Battery is not Charging" but since I have been using macs -- the past 8 years, all the batteries I have used always stop at 99% and sometimes go to 100, and sometimes not, I have never really cared... it's just one percent so like... 20 seconds of power?

hope that helps, and thanks for alll the replies eeryone!

 

[FadeToBlack]

That happens to me all the time, not the "Battery is not Charging" but since I have been using macs -- the past 8 years, all the batteries I have used always stop at 99% and sometimes go to 100, and sometimes not, I have never really cared... it's just one percent so like... 20 seconds of power?

hope that helps, and thanks for alll the replies eeryone!

It did the "battery is not charging" thing again, so I got out that old MaCally power adapter and it did the same thing, so I unplugged it, let it get down to about 91%, plugged the official iBook power adapter back in and now it's charging. This is odd.

I don't know if it's a Leopard bug or not, since Coconut Battery will also say that it isn't charging when the indicator in the menu bar says it.

Man, I hope this isn't a hardware issue.

If it'll help, here's what Coconut Battery says right now:

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Did you try resetting the PRAM? Also the battery will not charge if it's at 95% or more.

 

[FadeToBlack]

Did you try resetting the PRAM? Also the battery will not charge if it's at 95% or more.

Haven't tried resetting the PRAM yet, but I'll give it a shot.

How does it get up to 100% charge, if it won't charge past 95% or more? When I turned it off earlier, I'm pretty sure it was at 99% and said "finishing charge."

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

If you take your laptop off the AC adapter for a few minutes and drain it down to say 95% and then plug it back in, it will not charge battery. You have to take it off the charger to drain it further down before it will charge back up. Sorry if I didn't explain that correctly. It's also good to drain your battery completely at least once a month to keep the battery "healthy".

I know when one of my batteries wasn't reading accurately, I did the PRAM reset but I kept it held down until it restarted about 5 times since it didn't work with just one reset. Hope this helps.

 

[FadeToBlack]

If you take your laptop off the AC adapter for a few minutes and drain it down to say 95% and then plug it back in, it will not charge battery. You have to take it off the charger to drain it further down before it will charge back up. Sorry if I didn't explain that correctly. It's also good to drain your battery completely at least once a month to keep the battery "healthy".

I know when one of my batteries wasn't reading accurately, I did the PRAM reset but I kept it held down until it restarted about 5 times since it didn't work with just one reset. Hope this helps.

Wow, so the "battery is not charging" thing is normal? I'll explain what I was doing a little better. I was sitting in the recliner in the living room with the iBook plugged in. Since we don't have a table there, I got up and unplugged the iBook and took it over to the coffee table, so that I could have a cigarette and then about 10 minutes later, I plugged it back in and it was at about 91% and it said "battery is not charging," so as I said earlier, I tried my MaCally power adapter and it did the same thing, so I then unplugged it for a few minutes, then plugged it back in and it started charging.

So I guess this could be normal, if I understood correctly. I'm pretty sleepy and I think I'm getting the flu, so I'm a bit "foggy" at the moment.

EDIT: I ended up going ahead and resetting the PRAM on the iBook (which I'm typing this on) and I'm running it off the battery right now. Gonna run it for a little bit more tonight on the battery, then do it some more when I wake up and go ahead and run it down and charge it back up again. I'll report back.

 

[FadeToBlack]

Okay, I ran the battery all the way down to empty, then plugged in the power adapter and just as I figured, it said "battery is not charging." It was showing that the power adapter was connected, though. I then shut down the iBook and took the battery out and put it back in, turned it on and it is now charging. Man, this is puzzling. Does it sound like I need a new battery or what? This battery holds an awesome charge (around 4 1/2 hours of normal use) so I don't think that's the case.

If anyone has any ideas what could be causing this issue, I'd be very grateful. Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I've came to the conclusion that the "issue" I was experiencing is most likely just normal behavior. Usually, when I unplug the power adapter and run off battery power for a few minutes, then plug the power adapter back in, it'll say "battery is not charging" for a couple of minutes, then it'll start charging. This is probably just normal. I've never really had a laptop that I've used (or loved) as much as this iBook and I'm figuring that I was just reading too much into it, as I usually do.