MBP shuts down when battery is empty

[TodVader]

When I get to about 6%, it tells me that it's on low battery. If I let it go to 0%, it just shuts down completely. My ibook just went to sleep when the battery was at 0%. Did they downgrade this feature or does my MBP have a problem? I'm on the phone with Applecare right now and she says it's normal. I said no and she went to "research" the problem.

Is it normal?

 

[iShater]

Does it shut down or go into deep sleep?

 

[belvdr]

If the battery is 0%, I think it would be normal to shutdown. Going into sleep means the battery still has to keep enough charge to keep the system in memory. If the battery doesn't have enough charge to maintain the sleep mode, then the system is shutdown ungracefully.

All of the PCs I have ever seen do this.

 

[illegallydead]

Ya man the title says it all. Of course a laptop will shut down when it's battery is empty. Freakin' Duh.

It will tell you that you are running on reserve power, and that means that perhaps you should take the hint and plug it in or at least save your data.
When the battery really is that low on charge, it will not have enough power to retain the data in memory, so me thinks that Apple coded it in so that it just shuts down normally when you get that low, so as not to have it have a hard shutdown.
I would think that the difference between your iBook and your MBP is that the MBP will let you run more or less until it cannot run any more, and hopes that you are of enough intelligence to take the hint when it keeps reminding you that you have no charge left, and will push itself to where it has a true 1-0.5% charge left, than kills itself. I'm guessing that the iBook would sleep itself when it truly had something to the extent of 1-2% charge left.

Moral of the story: things change from build to build, and there is a reason that that prompt tells you to save data and plug it in ASAP

[edit]
Not to mention the fact that completely killing a battery cannot be good for it's health...
[/edit]

 

[Hemingray]

[edit]
Not to mention the fact that completely killing a battery cannot be good for it's health...
[/edit]

Quite the contrary, Apple recommends doing it at least once per month:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

 

[Polymira]

I've been wondering the same thing...

On my old MacBook it would go to sleep when the battery "died", so if I could get to a charger soon it would pop right back on! But with my new glassbook pro, it just goes right for deep sleep (hibernate) immediately.

Is this how it should be?

 

[TodVader]

Ok I'm done on the phone. I was right. It is supposed to go to sleep. When you put the AC back on and press the power button, you come back from sleep. Mine just shuts down. She made me reset things with and without the battery and now I got a case number to call back when the battery runs out (it's at 50% now).

I don't know what Apple notebooks are using the above posters but all (3) the laptops I bought from them went to sleep when they ran out of battery. None just shut down. If it shuts down, I will call back and she said they'll replace it. It'll be my 4th MBP!! I'm getting irritated with all that. I hope they will let me keep my HD, I'm tired of reinstalling everything.

 

[Hemingray]

From Apple's Knowledge Base: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

Exerpt from instructions for calibrating a MacBook Pro's battery:

3. Disconnect the power adapter with the computer still on and start running the computer off battery power. You may use your computer during this time. When your battery gets low, you will see the low battery warning dialog on the screen.

4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep [emphasis mine]. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.

 

[TodVader]

From Apple's Knowledge Base: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

Exerpt from instructions for calibrating a MacBook Pro's battery:

Exactly. I am running a test right now. I'm at 2% and it will either sleep or shutdown after. If it shuts down, it's MBP number 4 for me.

 

[illegallydead]

Quite the contrary, Apple recommends doing it at least once per month:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

ah ha I stand corrected.

Perhaps I should do that... on about 129 cycles thus far on my early 2007 MB... Then again, at this point I'll likely just get a new battery when I get to around 300 and it starts having problems...

 

[belvdr]

From Apple's Knowledge Base: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

Exerpt from instructions for calibrating a MacBook Pro's battery:

It also says:

Once the battery is truly exhausted, the computer is forced to shut down.

So the battery isn't truly at 0% (meaning no physical voltage left) when OS X forces it to sleep. I'm thinking the OP's battery must be truly at 0% when it shuts off.

 

[illegallydead]

I've been wondering the same thing...

On my old MacBook it would go to sleep when the battery "died", so if I could get to a charger soon it would pop right back on! But with my new glassbook pro, it just goes right for deep sleep (hibernate) immediately.

Is this how it should be?

It has been proven that I am not an expert in this matter but I would think that given everyone's experience, hibernation is what it should do, as this will preserve the contents of your RAM on the HDD, allowing your comp. to not have to completely re-boot. It seems that people are taking issue with the fact that it fully shuts down, instead of hibernate (deep sleep)

 

[TodVader]

Ok. After doing the 2 resets that Apple told me to do, everything is ok. It's not the same sleep that my iBook does (regular sleep). It has some kind of a loading screen and it takes about 10 seconds until you get back to doing what you were doing.

Before I called them, it would just turn off and i'd lose any unsaved work. (It didn't happen but sometimes I rely on that sleep with my iBook for keeping apps open and it never failed me).

So I guess I'll keep this MBP since this is now a non-problem.

 

[eerokk]

Could you detail the "resets" you did with the Applecare rep? My computer just started this strange behavior and I'd like to get back to the computer hibernating when the battery reaches 0%.

 

[Consultant]

Your battery capacity is too low to save contents from memory to disk.

Get a new battery and it should be fixed.


Keep in mind that:
- iBook only sleeps
- newer Macs both sleeps AND save memory content to disk (takes more power), so if your battery isn't in the best shape this might fail (fails frequently on PCs, but usually works on Macs).

Could you detail the "resets" you did with the Applecare rep? My computer just started this strange behavior and I'd like to get back to the computer hibernating when the battery reaches 0%.

Perhaps it's the SMU (or PMU on older macs) reset.

 

[rickeames]

+1 on the details. I'm on my second MBP (sigh) and would like to not have to swap out again. My MBP woke itself up from sleep while I was gone and ran down to zero and shut off, not saving anything I had open. Very irritating. At least I have 3 hours to wait for it to charge back up again.

 

[macrem]

I calibrated the battery on my new MBP. It went into deep sleep. Maybe it was before the deep sleep feature that Apple laptops would sleep for longer periods of time before powering down?

It will tell you that you are running on reserve power, and that means that perhaps you should take the hint and plug it in or at least save your data.

With deep sleep, you don't necessarily have to save. The state of your system is saved automatically before the machine powers down.

 

[hari-bhari]

my old MBP (early 2008) and MB (2007) would force itself to sleep when the battery was too low. the reserve power warning came around 7% but then if i kept using it, it would force itself into sleep. note, it did NOT enter deep sleep unless i left it there for at least 5-6hrs. this means that it would force itself to sleep when it still had a couple of percent left to maintain itself in sleep mode. if you pushed it past that, it would enter hibernate. that is the screen you see where everything is white and there is a progress bar at the bottom. however, the new MBP does not enter sleep when the battery gets down to minimum. it just goes straight to deep sleep after writing the contents of the ram to the hard drive. this is kind of annoying and hopefully will be fixed in a fw update.

 

[JayKay321]

From Apple's Knowledge Base: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490

Exerpt from instructions for calibrating a MacBook Pro's battery:

4. Continue to keep your computer on until it goes to sleep [emphasis mine]. Save all your work and close all applications when the battery gets very low, before the computer goes to sleep.

See here's where it's confusing. I assumed since it literally says "until it goes to sleep" that the computer's sleep light would turn on as when you simply close the lid. But when my battery ran out, it just shut off with no sleep light. So you're saying this is NOT normal? The sleep light should be on after the low battery warning?

 

[macrem]

[...]it just goes straight to deep sleep after writing the contents of the ram to the hard drive. this is kind of annoying and hopefully will be fixed in a fw update.

I'm not sure its a bug, it may be intended behavior if Apple felt most people would rather be able to keep using their laptops until it just has to go into deep sleep or risk losing power.

 

[macrem]

See here's where it's confusing. I assumed since it literally says "until it goes to sleep" that the computer's sleep light would turn on as when you simply close the lid. But when my battery ran out, it just shut off with no sleep light. So you're saying this is NOT normal? The sleep light should be on after the low battery warning?

In sleep, the pulsating standby light functions. In deep sleep, your machine is fully shut down and there is no power to the light.

 

[TodVader]

Here are the resets done with apple:

-Remove battery and hold power for over 10 seconds
-put back battery and hold OPTION+COMMAND+U+P+POWER until you hear the second dong sound... (lasts about 30 seconds) I'm not to sure about the U & P so someone can correct me if they know the key combinations.

After doing that, it stopped shutting down and started using deep sleep instead.

 

[MatthewStorm]

I had this exact same issue on the 15" MBP 2.53Ghz. My computer would simply 'shot down' with no sleep warning at all. I returned it yesterday and got the 2.8Ghz 250 7200 HDD and started calibrated the battery. Went to bed last night with 21 minutes remaining. Got up this morning to 21 minutes remaining. At 10 minutes I got the sleep warning. Yaah! All working well.

 

[Red-red]

I did mine last night at it shut down. I can't really see a massive problem with it myself and surely it's a software issue not hardware?

It's certainly not enough of a issue to get a whole machine replaced for...

 

[macrem]

If your MB shuts down without deep sleeping first, check the battery health and maybe try a recalibration.