reviving a long dormant ibook

[shamini]

My iBook has lain dormant for the last 6 months. The battery of course has therefore run down. I plugged it in to power, left it plugged in overnight. But when I turn on the power switch, I heard a whirring noise, and then silence. a couple of times, it actually powered up and my desktop showed up, but then in a few seconds, it turned itself off.

Is there any way I can get the computer to tun on and stay on?

 

[Makosuke]

Well, one thing to try is to remove the battery, plug it in, and see if it will boot and/or stay on. If it does, that probably means the battery is bad, and may have been causing the problems.

If it does exactly the same thing, then there may be something wrong with the machine.

I know that older G3-era PowerBooks had a small bank of backup batteries that, when dead, would prevent the machine from booting or even charging; this would happen if the thing sat for a few weeks with no power.

A quick fix for this was to open the keyboard and disconnect it from the motherboard, start it (which worked fine) and then plug it in, at which point it would charge and run normally. However, I don't know whether iBooks have something equivalent.

[Edit: According to this Apple article, no iBook has that kind of battery pack, so maybe your problem is different, although I'd think they at least have a capacitor or something to keep the clock from resetting, which might also effect the ability to boot.]

 

[shamini]

THANKS!!!! removing the battery worked brilliantly. So all I have to do is replace the battery - the computer is just fine and is working happily.

 

[Makosuke]

Glad it was that simple.

Just for the heck of it, you might try booting it without the battery, then putting the battery in; if the battery is actually broken it'll probably just shut it down, but there's at least a chance that the battery was just stone dead and the charging circuitry was acting up because of it, in which case it might start charging normally.

No harm in trying before you buy a replacement.