MacBook Battery Acting Weird - What should the Amperage mA level be?

[Scottsdale]

I am checking out a friend's MacBook because she says it's not charging properly. It is a two-year-old MacBook. It has a battery with 125 cycles. Mac OS X Snow Leopard is running and profiler says "Normal" battery.

I had her fully discharge the battery overnight. She says it had only said 450 mAh under full charge capacity yesterday. Today it says 4,216. The MB was plugged in and the charger had a green light visible indicating it was fully charged. However, under the system profiler it says it's not fully charged and at charge remaining of 3105.

One thing that looks odd is the Amperage mA. It shows -1697? Should that really be a negative number?

I am helping her with it now. Please answer if you know what the issue is or if conditioning it has fixed it? But if so, why would it stop charging around 73%?

I also had her do an NVRAM and SMC reset over the phone last night.

Thanks for your assistance in advance.

 

[pvmacguy]

What kind of macbook? Polycarb or aluminum? My aluminium macbook's battery capacity says it can hold up to 4100mAh and its current capacity it will charge to is 97% @ 3984mAh. And it has 99 cycles if thats of any assistance.

 

[Scottsdale]

What kind of macbook? Polycarb or aluminum? My aluminium macbook's battery capacity says it can hold up to 4100mAh and its current capacity it will charge to is 97% @ 3984mAh. And it has 99 cycles if thats of any assistance.

How about your amperage? Go into system profiler and click on the "power" selection. Will show you all of the details including amperage and cycles and etc.


In about one hour the charge remaining dropped from 3000 to 500??? Crazy. Now the amperage is saying 1000... no longer negative. This is really weird!

 

[pvmacguy]

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 995
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3996
Health Information:
Cycle count: 99
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1042
Voltage (mV): 11147

 

[Scottsdale]

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 995
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3996
Health Information:
Cycle count: 99
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1042
Voltage (mV): 11147

Ok, so your mA or Amperage is normal at -1402? So why did this one go up to positive numbers? Really weird. I think the battery is toast, but I am not sure. It seems maybe another conditioning, another NVRAM and SMC resets will be a good start from this point.

Thanks for posting your information...