Let me begin by saying that I've been a long time reader of these forums and after making the switch to Mac last year, I'll never look back 
That being said, I did my fair share of scouring the forums looking for someone with similar problems, but I could not find anything specific enough, so please forgive me for starting another thread...
Unfortunately, I'm having an issue with my MBP and any help troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated. I apologize in advance for my rambling post
Ok, so last year I bought a used MBP (pre-unibody, model A1211) on eBay that had a bad logic board. I replaced the LB and everything has been working great.... About 5 months ago the stock battery went out on me, so I bought an aftermarket (I'm sure that was a mistake) battery on eBay and it seemed to work just fine.
Fast forward to a few days ago...
I found a great deal on a factory refurbished Aluminum Unibody MacBook 2.4 so I figured It was time for an upgrade. I had bought a 500gb 7200rpm HD and installed it in my MBP when I got it. The AluMB I bought came with a stock 250gb HD. I did some research and discovered that I could just swap the drives so I could keep my 500gb drive with all my info and not have to worry about transferring anything. I planned to put the 500gb in my AluMB and put the stock 250gb in my MBP and put it up for sale on eBay.
So, I swap the drives and everything seemed to be fine. Having my new AluMB, I sat the old MBP aside and it sat for a few days. When I got it back out to take pics of it, I noticed that it would not turn on. I figured "oh, well the battery is dead" and flipped over the MBP to check the battery indicator... 3 lights. hmm. So I plug in the MBP and it boots up fine, but the magsafe charger stays green (indicating that it isn't charging). I forgot to mention that I was using my new AluMB charger with it. It is a 60w charger (I believe) and the MBP uses an 85w... So I then assumed it was because I was using the 60w charger, and that was why it wasn't charging. That still does not explain why the battery indicator has 3 lights lit.... I go to system profiler and see that the battery health is "Good" and that the battery has a 52% charge, but the MBP shuts off instantly when the magsafe is pulled. I also noticed that my keyboard backlight was not working (classic sign that SMC needs to be reset)... I tried the MBP 85w charger, and it did the same thing. Only runs when plugged in, and will not charge.
So, I reset the SMC and PRAM and the keyboard backlight came back, but I'm still having issues with the battery. I then thought maybe an OS reinstall would help... I restored the MBP with the OSX recovery disks and everything went well, then when I tried to upgrade to Snow Leopard, the MBP is randomly shutting itself off when I try to boot from the disk....
Do you think I may have bumped a connection to the left i/o board while I was changing the hard drive? Would that cause this behavior? Or do you think it's just a bad battery? I unfortunately do not have an extra battery to test. I think I may take it to the Apple store and see if they can put another battery in it to test. If it's not the battery, I would suspect maybe a bad I/O board? What do you guys think?
That being said, I did my fair share of scouring the forums looking for someone with similar problems, but I could not find anything specific enough, so please forgive me for starting another thread...
Unfortunately, I'm having an issue with my MBP and any help troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated. I apologize in advance for my rambling post
Ok, so last year I bought a used MBP (pre-unibody, model A1211) on eBay that had a bad logic board. I replaced the LB and everything has been working great.... About 5 months ago the stock battery went out on me, so I bought an aftermarket (I'm sure that was a mistake) battery on eBay and it seemed to work just fine.
Fast forward to a few days ago...
I found a great deal on a factory refurbished Aluminum Unibody MacBook 2.4 so I figured It was time for an upgrade. I had bought a 500gb 7200rpm HD and installed it in my MBP when I got it. The AluMB I bought came with a stock 250gb HD. I did some research and discovered that I could just swap the drives so I could keep my 500gb drive with all my info and not have to worry about transferring anything. I planned to put the 500gb in my AluMB and put the stock 250gb in my MBP and put it up for sale on eBay.
So, I swap the drives and everything seemed to be fine. Having my new AluMB, I sat the old MBP aside and it sat for a few days. When I got it back out to take pics of it, I noticed that it would not turn on. I figured "oh, well the battery is dead" and flipped over the MBP to check the battery indicator... 3 lights. hmm. So I plug in the MBP and it boots up fine, but the magsafe charger stays green (indicating that it isn't charging). I forgot to mention that I was using my new AluMB charger with it. It is a 60w charger (I believe) and the MBP uses an 85w... So I then assumed it was because I was using the 60w charger, and that was why it wasn't charging. That still does not explain why the battery indicator has 3 lights lit.... I go to system profiler and see that the battery health is "Good" and that the battery has a 52% charge, but the MBP shuts off instantly when the magsafe is pulled. I also noticed that my keyboard backlight was not working (classic sign that SMC needs to be reset)... I tried the MBP 85w charger, and it did the same thing. Only runs when plugged in, and will not charge.
So, I reset the SMC and PRAM and the keyboard backlight came back, but I'm still having issues with the battery. I then thought maybe an OS reinstall would help... I restored the MBP with the OSX recovery disks and everything went well, then when I tried to upgrade to Snow Leopard, the MBP is randomly shutting itself off when I try to boot from the disk....
Do you think I may have bumped a connection to the left i/o board while I was changing the hard drive? Would that cause this behavior? Or do you think it's just a bad battery? I unfortunately do not have an extra battery to test. I think I may take it to the Apple store and see if they can put another battery in it to test. If it's not the battery, I would suspect maybe a bad I/O board? What do you guys think?
Last edited:
