"battery not available", battery not charging

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Level 1

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"battery not available", battery not charging

I just bought a NuPower battery fo my IBook G4. It's been working fine for a month or so. However, now my computer won't charge the battery. Near the battery icon at the top of the screen, it at first says "caluculating..." and then says "battery not available". Further, sometimes even when the power cord is plugged in (and the LED's are lit up), it still runs on the battery power and says the power is not plugged in. And, the lighting on the LED's do not correspond at all with the battery charge(i.e. it is sometimes green even though there is no battery power). Maybe these are 2 different problems?

Any advice would be appreciated-I'm no where near a MAC service provider.

IBook G4

Posted on Jul 17, 2008 7:04 PM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,966 points

Jul 17, 2008 8:30 PM in response to canuck11

There are two things you could try.

1. "Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit" (PMU)
Performing a PMU reset returns the iBook and PowerBook hardware, including NVRAM,
to default settings and forces the computer to shut down. ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431 - 36k - Cached - Similar pages

2. "Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance"
The battery needs to be recalibrated from time to time to keep the onscreen battery
time and percent display accurate. With all iBooks and PowerBook G4 ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

"Mac OS X 10.4 Help: Calibrating an iBook or PowerBook battery"
If you have an iBook or PowerBook portable computer, you should calibrate the
battery to get the longest running life during the first week you have your ...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1959.html -

Also, you may see what the computer's power and battery life look like in
the Profiler's energy/battery logs. Some widgets are good for battery info.

The battery seller may have some kind of support, since that part is not
an original replacement part and may have issues of its own. Sometimes
the recalibration and pmu resets will help new batteries work properly.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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