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Mid 2009 Model A1278 / 2.26 or 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo processor EMC 2326

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Erratic "Battery Charging /Not charging"

Ever since I did a Mountain Lion update I´ve had various troubles with battery power. I reverted to Snow Leopard after installing an SSD and the issue did not go away. The indicator was saying "Replace battery". Immediately before the ML attempt my battery was showing 91% capacity, after the upgrade it started telling me to replace the battery!

So I bought an original Apple battery and replaced it. It seemed to work fine for some weeks but has now started saying "Not charging" sometimes. Coconut Battery if left open changes from charging to not charging. I checked for bad connections to the battery but that seems to be OK.

Is this a firmware issue caused by the Mountain Lion installation I did earlier on the original hard disk? Is there a solution?

Colin P

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Seems PRAM power is also a possibility. waiting to hear back from someone who knows how to determine if the machine has either a PRAM battery, a capacitor or if the main battery powers the PRAM.

Today i put the original battery back and was able to start up and do a full power cycle, everything normal. Did power cycle and left machine off and without power supply for a couple hours. Seems to be working fine, all previous symptons gone.

Put the new battery back and did the same, same result.

Will see how it is after being off and disconnected overnight.

Take a look at this thread, I got an answer that may provide the way to determine just how the PRAM is maintained.

<pram battery MacBook mb991>

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This happened to me when replacing the battery on a MacBook A1181. The battery was new, was charging fine but it says "Replace battery". I did a restart and reset parameter and reset SMC. I did a couple of complete drain/charge of the battery. No more error messages. I trust Coconut Battery more than OSX :-)

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

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Thanks for that.

I have already done all the things you mention and more. I didn´t mention in my question that "Disk Utility" found serious corruption on

my internal SSD. I booted from Snow Leopard Installer DVD and ran "Repair Disk", which fixed a whole bunch of errors but the problems persisted even after running "Disk Warrior" which also fixed a whole bunch. Machine ran normally for about 1 day but my first attempt to start up from battery failed.

NEXT I erased the internal SSD and used Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer my CCC backup to it. This stabilised things quite a lot. I am still in the process of power cycling the machine multiple times. Will report back when I´m convinced everything is OK. BTW I trust CCC more than Apples "Time Machine".

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It seems it WAS Firmware! I re-installed the Mountain Lion HD in the Laptop. Downloaded the latest Combo update and ran it. Apple website says the combo is 600 or so MB but over 800 actually got downloaded. SNEAKY?

Whatever the Snow Leopard SSD is back in place now and everything works just fine.

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I'm having the same problem, sometimes it shuts down from nothing while on battery and other times it runs ok. The battery is new, replaced one week ago.

Now it's charging properly. I'm hating SMC and updates.

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You don´t mention which system version you are running or which model your machine is. I think this is highly relevant.

Two days ago this issue returned on my MBP 5,5 (mid 2009 13"). I am not interested in "Mountain Lion" and as I wrote above I went to a lot of trouble to revert to "Snow Leopard", which IMHO is the best ever Mac OS for my purposes.

I forgot to mention that not only the "Battery not charging" warning was coming and going but also the "Time & date" settings were lost every time the problem occurred.

Once again I re-installed my hard disk with ML into the machine, downloaded

the 10.8.2 "Combo update" and ran it. Everything was back to normal. This time the dmg that came down was the size that was stated on the download page at Apple.com.

Then swapped out the internal drive back to the SSD with "Snow Leopard".

Booted the machine from my CCC backup disk (in a USB box) and was able to repair the corrupted SSD. Booted back to SSD and everything looked good.

All that took place yesterday, today I booted without power supply or internet connection and the problem was back. In fact the machine switched itself off after 10 minutes. Did a SMC, was able to start but "Disk utility"found the SSD to be corrupt again. Back to my, non-corrupted CCCbackup, repaired the SSD.

As I write this, the "not charging" is coming and going all the time. I´m booted from the CCC backup.

So, to summarize ....

This HAS to be firmware trouble. It´s directly related to upgrading my original system HD to Mountain Lion, the issue began immediately after the install. Apple is kind of "in denial" of this issue AFAIK.

So I would really like to hear from anyone who has this trouble with a view to starting a "Class Action" to force Apple to either issue a patch to fix this or provide a free replacement Motherboard if it can´t be fixedPlease specify

which Machine you have.

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Hi, I had this issue later also. For what I see this may be a firmware issue but both times I have just reset pram and SMC reset and charged/drained the battery 2-3 times and the error went away. Both batteries work fine now. Seems the new battery is a bit confused or the MBP is confused of a new battery. Giving it a kick start seems to help.

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"Not Charging" issue after MacBook Air 1.1 upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion...

The battery not charging issue occurred to after I eventually decided to upgrade my Macbook Air 1.1 from Snow Leopard 10.6.8 to Lion 10.7.4.

I backed-up my user profile using Carbon Copy Cloner and then wiped the SSD for a clean install of Lion. Install went smoothly.

Lion however puts strain on the Macbook Air 1.1 with the laptop running hotter for longer. After 1 day and 1 night of running Lion suddenly the Air would not charge with no light on the Magsafe plug at all and the Menu Bar showing "not charging" - battery stuck at 45%.

Long story short....

I hauled out my old Snow Leopard install disc, deleted Lion, and did a clean install of Snow Leopard 10.6. After the install I checked everything was running, then I unplugged the magsafe adaptor from the laptop (Which was still showing "Not charging" 45%) and the wall. I then switched the laptop off - as in "Shutdown" and left it alone for the night.

Next morning I power up the laptop (without plugging it in) and it's showing the correct battery info. Plug in magsafe and it charges as per normal. Something in Lion messed with my Macbook Air and I'm not going to try another install. The Macbook Air 1.1 is a much happier and speedier puppy on Snow Leopard anyway. ;-)

I've updated to Snow Leopard 10.6.8 from the original install using the combo update and everything is still working as it should 4 days later...

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Colin Prutton will be eternally grateful.
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