Battery will not charge when plugged in

W

Wantofasmile

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I recently bought a new battery for my ibook G4 and thought that it would solve the issues I was having with my battery. When I went to plug in the power adapter, the battery icon does not change to show that it's charging, so I borrowed a friend's because I thought I needed a new adapter, but it's still doing the same thing. So I've ruled out that it's not the battery or the adapter. Any ideas?
 
what color is the light in the power adapter plug when you plug it in to your iBook? It should show green for a few moments, then change to amber, indicating charging. The icon in your menubar should change from a battery symbol to a power plug symbol, then the lightning bolt, again indicating charging. The last (the lightning bolt) can take a couple of minutes before it changes, and doesn't change at all if your battery is above 94% of full charge.

What do the power plug light and menubar icons do on your iBook?

You can also go to your System Profiler utility, then the Power tab. That will show you something about the condition of the battery, and the charger. Refresh the screen (command-R), and you can watch the charging numbers change in the System Profiler window.
 
When I plug it in, it changes to amber but the battery icon doesn't change. And where is the System Profiler utility located?
 
This is the information I get:

Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4400
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 4400
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12616
Cycle Count: 1

AC Charger Information:

AC Charger (Watts): 50
Connected: Yes
Charging: No
 
Your battery doesn't charge, because it's fully charged.
(Remaining capacity is near, or equal to Full Charge capacity)
The battery does not charge if your battery is more than 94% of full charge. If you want to see that happen, run your iBook on battery for an hour or so, then plug in, and you will see the battery charge (assuming good battery).

The power port (where you plug in your power adapter) sometimes goes bad. You can often tell by the light. Put a little side pressure on the plug when connected, and watch for the light to blink a bit. That can tell you that the connection is not very good. If you don't see any variation from that light, then you are probably OK.

Put your old battery back in, and go back to your System profiler. You will probably see that battery does not have anywhere near the Full Charge capacity of your new battery.
 
I also have an iBook G4, but my problem is my battery charging properly. It states that it has a full charge, then it drops to a 50% charge in no time. I've tried Battery Health Monitor and it doesn't even recognize my battery.

Anyone got any suggestions?
 
@ giaguara i have no idea. i'm not able to locate the battery with the system profiler. will resetting the PRAM affect my ibook negatively? here is something else i noticed. i have two batteries. battery 1 (third party battery) states that it will take 8 hours to charge (ridiculous, i know), the amber light never changes to green. battery 2 (OEM apple) states that it will be at full capacity in 30-45 minutes after being completely drained, then it dies in less than 15 minutes. i am using a standard OEM 45W power adapter. could this be the batteries being faulty?
 
PRAM will not affect negatively your iBook. It has some settings (not all listed in the article) stored in it, and reseting it is simple and fast.

Battery information in System Profiler is under Hardware > Power.
 
My battery information isn't identified whatsoever in my system profiler. there is no "power" listing under hardware. i'm using os x 10.3.9 if that helps anything. thanks for the help thus far. i did the PRAM reset and i still have nothing.
 
Hm... 10.3.9 had it maybe in a different location, but there should be something about the battery somewhere if it's recognized. :-/
 
No, 10.3.9 (Panther) does not show battery info, other than the normal battery level. I'm sure there is some battery info app that will display the hardware data for the battery, but I don't know what that is. I work with Macs all day, and I boot laptops to Tiger, or Leopard if they will boot, just for the extra battery info available.
I'm not sure if that is adequate rationale to upgrade to Tiger or Leopard, but Tiger is a good upgrade in general.
 
You can get the battery information on 10.3.9 with the shell command:

/usr/sbin/ioreg -p IODeviceTree -n battery -w 0 | grep yI

I don't remember where I found that, but it's been helpful.

I also have been looking into why our iBook G4 stopped charging. I changed batteries and the AC adapter. I reset the power manager. Any other ideas?
 
If your battery and power adapter are both probably good, then the most likely culprit for not charging is the DC-in board (where your power adapter attaches)
 
DeltaMac said:
If your battery and power adapter are both probably good, then the most likely culprit for not charging is the DC-in board (where your power adapter attaches)
Click to expand...

Is it possible for the DC-in board to be the culprit when a laptop works plugged in, but doesn't charge the battery?
 
Yes, that's the only connection to charge the battery, and it shares the power. Remember, you can take the battery completely out, and you still get power. Put the battery back in, and the power adapter knows the battery is there (the orange light will come on, indicating charging). The DC-in board provides some of the switching between charging, or just providing power to the system. Could be just an intermittent connection, but the best fix is to replace that board. I replace quite a few of those for that kind of problem.
 
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