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HIMAN1998

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 24, 2013
338
0
Richmond, VA
Holy crap is all I have to say. My MacBook has been shutting off randomly around 60% of the battery life, but I was trying to change an icon to something else (MacBook was unplugged) and it shut down, at like 80% I'm pretty sure. I was thinking this was a battery problem. When I booted it, it booted with a progress bar that froze at about 1/4 the way. I tried resetting PRAM, I tried resetting SMC, I tried safe boot. After all of that, I just gave up and tried going to sleep from my headache while it was doing the loading bar. I saw a flash of light from the laptop, and looked over and a window popped up saying I shut down the laptop unexpectedly or something like that. Now it's working fine, and it's plugged in. Is my hard drive going bad, or is it a battery problem, or both? I'm already gonna get a new battery soon, but should I invest in another hard drive/SSD? t's a late 2008 model, with the original battery, but I replaced the hard drive with a 320GB when I got the laptop, the 320GB was lightly used, if at all used.
 
Holy crap is all I have to say. My MacBook has been shutting off randomly around 60% of the battery life, but I was trying to change an icon to something else (MacBook was unplugged) and it shut down, at like 80% I'm pretty sure. I was thinking this was a battery problem. When I booted it, it booted with a progress bar that froze at about 1/4 the way. I tried resetting PRAM, I tried resetting SMC, I tried safe boot. After all of that, I just gave up and tried going to sleep from my headache while it was doing the loading bar. I saw a flash of light from the laptop, and looked over and a window popped up saying I shut down the laptop unexpectedly or something like that. Now it's working fine, and it's plugged in. Is my hard drive going bad, or is it a battery problem, or both? I'm already gonna get a new battery soon, but should I invest in another hard drive/SSD? t's a late 2008 model, with the original battery, but I replaced the hard drive with a 320GB when I got the laptop, the 320GB was lightly used, if at all used.

I would use disk utility and repair your disk just in case, but I think that because your computer shut down unexpectedly, it was doing a one time hard drive check to make sure there was nothing wrong.
 
One of my MacBook's was doing the same thing, randomly shutting off even if there was significant battery life. I reset the SMC once and it seemed to fix the problem slightly. I reset the SMC for a second time and since then everything has been good.

I checked my disks to make sure there was nothing corrupted that could be causing the random turn-offs but everything checked out there as well.

If the problem persists, I'd try reseting the SMC again (unless this issue was fixed as stated in your other post about finding a corrupt portion of your hard drive).

- Kyle
 
I haven't tried to run on battery yet since I put 8GB RAM in this yesterday, but I will try when I get home from school. I just noticed I post a lot from school, though.
 
Holy crap is all I have to say. My MacBook has been shutting off randomly around 60% of the battery life, but I was trying to change an icon to something else (MacBook was unplugged) and it shut down, at like 80% I'm pretty sure. I was thinking this was a battery problem. When I booted it, it booted with a progress bar that froze at about 1/4 the way. I tried resetting PRAM, I tried resetting SMC, I tried safe boot. After all of that, I just gave up and tried going to sleep from my headache while it was doing the loading bar. I saw a flash of light from the laptop, and looked over and a window popped up saying I shut down the laptop unexpectedly or something like that. Now it's working fine, and it's plugged in. Is my hard drive going bad, or is it a battery problem, or both? I'm already gonna get a new battery soon, but should I invest in another hard drive/SSD? t's a late 2008 model, with the original battery, but I replaced the hard drive with a 320GB when I got the laptop, the 320GB was lightly used, if at all used.

When is the last time you calibrated your battery? See the CALIBRATION section of the link below for instructions on how to properly calibrate your battery.

The link below should answer most, if not all, of your battery/charging questions. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend you take the time to read it.
If you're not already doing so, use iStat Pro (free) or iStat Menus ($16) to get accurate readings of battery health and cycles and computer uptime, among many other things. A forum member has posted a copy of iStat Pro that has been "tweaked" to enhance compatibility with Mountain Lion. You can download it here.

Also, for battery, power, or charging issues, resetting the SMC is occasionally helpful. However, PRAM/NVRAM has nothing to do with these issues, so resetting it will not help.
 
I reset the SMC multiple times just now, it shut down on me in Chemistry. It was at like 65%. I tried rebooting without SMC reset, and when I would press the power button once, the sleep light would flash, but nothing else. If I pressed it again, it would boot fine but after I got to my normal screen, it would shut off. I have it plugged in now, though.
 
I reset the SMC multiple times just now, it shut down on me in Chemistry. It was at like 65%. I tried rebooting without SMC reset, and when I would press the power button once, the sleep light would flash, but nothing else. If I pressed it again, it would boot fine but after I got to my normal screen, it would shut off. I have it plugged in now, though.
You didn't respond to my question about calibration. Resetting the SMC won't make up for a lack of calibration.
 
I can't calibrate it if it shuts down without discharging 100%.
First, did you install iStat Pro, as recommended? What does it show for battery health? Second, you can calibrate it if you follow the instructions. The fact that it's shutting down with an indicated 60% or 80% points to the possibility that the readings are inaccurate.
 
First, did you install iStat Pro, as recommended? What does it show for battery health? Second, you can calibrate it if you follow the instructions. The fact that it's shutting down with an indicated 60% or 80% points to the possibility that the readings are inaccurate.

I have iStat Pro. It shows my battery health at 84%. iStat also shows that the battery has some remaining time.
 
I have iStat Pro. It shows my battery health at 84%. iStat also shows that the battery has some remaining time.
Yes, iStat Pro gets the battery readings from your Mac, so if it's not properly calibrated, the readings will be inaccurate, both on the Mac (in System Profiler) and in iStat Pro. How many cycles are on the battery?
 
Yes, iStat Pro gets the battery readings from your Mac, so if it's not properly calibrated, the readings will be inaccurate, both on the Mac (in System Profiler) and in iStat Pro. How many cycles are on the battery?

58, but it's the original battery from 2008. The person who used it before had it plugged in constantly.
 
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