Powerbook Battery - No low battery alert window

M

MMak

Registered
I've recently tried to drain the battery by having the computer run off the battery until it goes to sleep...then I went too far and had it forced shut down.

Ever since that incident my battery guage isn't calculating the times correctly. I could used to go down to 20 mins until the battery guage reaches "red" but now its 35 minutes. At around 20 minutes the computer goes to sleep without a warning. The battery now never seems to go down to 0% until it sleeps.

I've tried calibrating the battery a couple of times. By running the computer on battery until it drains and goes to sleep. Then recharging the battery until it's full. But no luck so far...

Any help would be extremely appreciated.
 
You don't say what OS you are running. If it is OS 9, go to the system folder>Preferences and trash the energy saver pref file. Close the windows and then go to the Energy Saver control panel. Reset your options, empty the trash and see if that corrects things.
 
Charge your battery to full. Leave it plugged in for a while afterwards to make sure it *is* full.

Restart into single user mode (hold Apple + S after resarting)

Unplug the power adaptor.

Let the machine run, and drain down the battery. Single user mode has no way of monitoring battery power and so the machine will run until the battery is empty.

The machine will turn off. Make sure just in case, that your 'Book is OFF.

Reset the PMU in the relevant way.

Plug in the power and restart. Let the battery charge to full.

This may work first time for you, it didn't for me so I did it a second time.

That could do it.


I had once the same problem with iBook, it was quite annoying. I can think two ways that can help it: the method described above, and reinstalling the OS X. I have once reinstalled it only because of that, as there didn't seem to be anything else that could have fixed it. Just as a safety measure, I unplugged the battery before installing.

There may be some other ways to fix it, but one of these two probably will work even in your case.
 
as posted before, I have the same problem. Tried resetting the PMU but it didn't work. Reinstalling the os didn't work for me too (man, this was a mess! took me easily 2 days just on backup-ing).
Did it just one time by now. So, gonna try another time and hope it will be done. If not, Apple will have to send me another battery! ;)
 
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