Problems after MacBook Pro battery removal

baryon

baryon

macrumors 68040
My Late 2013, 15 inch Retina MacBookPro's battery had been swelling for a year now, and a few days ago it started causing the trackpad to not work, so I had to have it removed to avoid it damaging things. However, they didn't have replacement batteries in stock so I have to wait a few weeks before the order arrives.

I couldn't afford an official Apple repair because for that I'd have to sell one of my yachts ;) so I had to take it to an otherwise well known and trusted 3rd party place that does chip-level repairs and exclusively deals with Apple products. This was actually what the geniuses recommended I do, as they admitted that their price for a simple battery replacement is not quite sane.

So today I got the machine back without the battery and now I find several strange things:
  1. The computer is very slow. Rendering a 30 minute job in DaVinci Resolve takes 2 hours. The fans don't even spin up audibly as they normally would do during rendering (they are spinning, just not fast).
  2. In "About this Mac", the Serial number shows as "Unavailable".
  3. In System Preferences, when I click trackpad, it says "Wait for a Bluetooth trackpad to be discovered" and also "No trackpad found". Despite this, the built-in trackpad is working fine, I just can't change its settings.
How much of this is "supposed to happen" when the battery is removed? There isn't much info online about how macOS behaves on a MacBook Pro with a missing battery, so I'm wondering if this is partially normal and will be resolved once a new battery is fitted.

Basically if I go back to the shop to complain, I want to have some information about what could be going on before I do so.

Could the techs have messed something up inside the machine that they didn't tell me about? Or is all this just due to, I don't know, the SMC or EFI or something not remembering things due to there not being a system battery?

Thanks, and please avoid "guessing" what the issue could be, I'm more interested in answers based on actual experience (say, you've used a MacBook Pro without a battery before, or you have a link).
 
As far as I know, MBPs cannot really run without battery. They need battery to keep CMOS (firmware memory) and they also use battery as backup power source. So when my MBP (2010) had dead battery it run extremely slow. Someone said here that MBPs will run at severely reduced CPU speed and with other limitations to prevent brownouts when power charger cannot keep up. I'd wait until you install the battery before using it. It is unlikely to be very useful...
 
i think it is safe to do as long as you don't stress the hardware with cpu hefty tasks. doing the same here until the new battery arrives. got a mbp l2011 for free that stopped charging years ago. wasn't usable until i killed the kernel_task throttling
 
Frieg said:
i think it is safe to do as long as you don't stress the hardware with cpu hefty tasks. doing the same here until the new battery arrives. got a mbp l2011 for free that stopped charging years ago. wasn't usable until i killed the kernel_task throttling
Click to expand...

Okay, thanks! While we're at it, can you check something for me? Since you have a MacBook Pro with a dead battery, are you having any other issues I've mentioned — such as not seeing the serial number or not seeing the trackpad gesture settings in System Preferences? Does your battery even show up to any extent (in the menu bar?).
 
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