Strange battery issues on my iBook G4.

[amberashby]

Hi all,

Recently I stared having problems with my iBook G4 800 when running on battery power. All is fine and then the power is around 40% left the computer will just go to sleep. No warning or anything. Then you can't wake it up. If you plug it back in it wakes up and shows the battery at 1%. Then it continues to charge back to 100%.

I bought a new battery thinking the battery I had was defective, but that didn't help.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[mkrishnan]

Try following the instructions for your model in this note:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449-en

 

[amberashby]

Try following the instructions for your model in this note:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449-en

I just tried reseting the PRAM as you sugessted, but it is still doing the same thing. this time with about 30% of the battery power left. Goes straight to sleep, with no warning. I plug it in and it wakes up and starts charging from 0%.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

I have Applecare but would like to try everything else before I call. I may try to see what happens under a fresh account.

 

[mkrishnan]

Any other ideas? Thanks.

There was another thread on this topic, recently, here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/178581/

He had similar problems, and it *did* appear to be his battery, although I'm not sure how it ended up, because Ed didn't get a chance to post back after picking up his Mac.

My top three guesses:

1) Your Power Management Unit software is messed up (we already tried this)
2) Your Battery is bad (looks like you already addressed this)
3) Your Power Management Unit *hardware* is messed up... meaning your computer has to go in to Apple for some TLC....

 

[eRondeau]

Do you know anybody else with a similar iBook that you can swap batteries with, in order to rule-out a problem with your computer? Will your local Friendly Apple Dealer assist you with some trial-and-error? How many hours are you getting off a full charge? Have you tried a battery stats program like iBatt or CoconutBattery? You're still a long way from sending your iBook back for repair in my opinion....