Q: MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

well guys!!!!! thought it was just mee,having recently upgraded to snow leopard.battery fine before.....but interestingly upgraded a macbook and NO issues have surfaced yet about battery......frustrating,pro 42 months old and heading for its 3rd battery!!!!!!!not happy!!!!

regards
iul

Thought I was the only one with this issue! Newer battery with 31 cycles displayed service battery after Snow upgrade.Tried running on battery power and all was ok.Ran battery down and recalibrated twice.Reset SMC twice. Problem became intermittent.I let it go for a few weeks.I then decided to replace the HD with a newer one.Instead of restoring from Time Machine,I did a fresh install of Snow and updated with the combo updater.No more problems! Hope this helps.

thanks...was going to update to 500gig hd anyway...must try that !!!!!!!regards
iul

The strangeness continues.....

My "Service Battery" warning has been evident for approximately the last 2 weeks.... then, tonight, it's gone! all clear!

I have absolutely no explanation as to why. No reboots, no repairing of permissions, nothing.

The battery's showing that only 78% of its design capacity is now available to me, but it's 20 months old and has had over 300 loadcycles.

Stats below:


Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number: 6N9090CLJ2VLA
Manufacturer: SMP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 000a
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 3470
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3588
Health Information:
Cycle count: 304
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 0
Voltage (mV): 12420

Greetings all.

Last night I upgraded to Snow Leopard, as I'd just installed a new hard disk. (old one failing)

I too had the "service battery" message in my battery status, and profiler battery status was "check".

Was a bit disappointed by it all, and did not think it was a problem with my battery like so many articles (and people suggest) - mainly because I was getting three ish hours out of a full charge in Leopard.

Even read some article that had a patronising tone of "Us technicians know what we are talking about and your battery is shot.. but Leopard did not realise it"

Anyway, to cut a long story short.. I fixed the issue by resetting the NVRAM (Power off, remove battery, hold power button for 5 secs, replace batt, restart.) All good now - service battery has gone, Profiler status is "Normal".

I think what surprised me more is the lack of "Support" info available from Apple, I've only been able to find mention of this in Forums and alike.

Anyway, hopefully this helps someone.

Cheers,

N.

I take it all back.

Service Battery is back.. again.

Looks like I'll be doing a downgrade to Leopard, and writing to Apple for my money back on the upgrade.

Gutted.

I'm on Leopard and experienced random power offs. In the same 2 months I've had the video card die and later the battery. I had to pay for a replacement battery as the Apple Store refused to replace my battery. It was on 678 cycles when tested at the store. The battery had swollen after Apple updates. Something I also noticed was that the light on the power cable flashed between green and yellow nearing the end of its recharge. Sometimes it would even stay green when it had to be recharged again.

My new battery only seems to last just over an hour under OS X. Battery issues seem to be long running on Apple laptops.


<Edited by Host>

Interesting event last night....

I'd early mentioned that the Service Battery icon had mysteriously disappeared and it seemed that my battery was more or less back to normal, albeit with a slightly depleted charge ceiling.

Well.....

I was syncing an iPhone last night, and the machine suffered a Kernel Panic midway through. After a reboot, the Service Battery icon was back!!

I've read through about 20 pages and it appears I have the same story as everyone here.

Instead of repeating it, though, what comes to mind is a class action lawsuit.

Clearly this is not a one-off problem. How many have reported it here? Thousands? I'm sure this is just a small sampling of what's happening out there. This problem is making people unnecessarily spend money to fix a hardware/software bug that doesn't even solve the issue.

Do we have a lawyer here?

Here are the stats on mine do you guys suggest getting a new battery?

Model Information:
Serial Number: 9G91405T63NYB
Manufacturer: DP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 0005
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2815
Fully charged: No
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3134
Health Information:
Cycle count: 337
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1026
Voltage (mV): 11772

My MacBook is about two years old.

I just took out the battery and and did a reboot. The "warning" is gone and is back to "normal". The time left seems appropriate for the percentage left also. This is weird.

I know it's totally useless posting here, I've posted in the past, but I suppose I'm frustrated and need to say again.

I had this issue a year ago when I first upgraded to Snow Leopard, I've got the MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo, my first battery was the Sony ASMB012, and after I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I experienced the "Service Battery" and random shutdowns... went to an Apple Store and got a free replacement, I guess I was lucky, but they gave me the same Sony ASMB012 and was said next time "I will need to pay"

Didn't want to risk so I downgraded to Leopard, and happily I have been using my laptop with no issues, had an healthy battery, taking care as much as I could...

But, I'm a software developer, focusing on iPhone/iPad applications, and our dear Apple now forces you to upgrade to Snow Leopard in terms to use last version of XCode and iOS SDK and to generate the final build to send to the App Store.

Reluctant of what happened to me before, I did install Snow Leopard on a Firewire external hard drive, so I could use mainly my laptop from internal HD with Leopard, and boot on the external HD to just generate the final build to send to Apple.

Well, been doing so for a couple of months, and guess what, I have got again the "Service Battery" and the stats for my battery suddenly have drop, one day ago I had a "Full charge capacity" of about 4500 mAh, today, only 3300 mAh. Cycle count is just 76.

Whatever happened, seems it has affected the battery cos even under Leopard I can see similar results.

So what should I do now? Buy a new battery? To what, to risk again the same issue? Am I forced to upgrade my laptop? Well, I was asking to myself, no need to replying me, just letting out my frustration... again.

Got a random shutdown (I am just on a normal mac book though) and the Service Battery message. This is my second battery. Here is the info:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: DP
Device name: ASMB016
Pack Lot Code: 0002
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 0110
Hardware Revision: 0500
Cell Revision: 0200
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 2666
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 2682
Health Information:
Cycle count: 95
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 218
Voltage (mV): 12615

approaching page 100...!

click on 'about my mac' and 'more' and see what the capacity of your battery is? I have the same problem and my capacity is about 2000 ><

In my case, all the numbers indicate that the battery should function perfectly, however, the condition shows "Replace Now" and the computer automatically turns off after about 10 minutes.

I have done both calibrating and SMC resetting and have seen no improvement.

I have checked on the green bar beside the Mac and the indicator reports full (8 green dots).

I have checked in system profiler, the information shows as bellow:

Model Information:
Serial Number: 6N90104022VLA
Manufacturer: SMP
Device name: bq20z951
Pack Lot Code: 0000
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 002a
Hardware Revision: 000a
Cell Revision: 0100
Charge Information:
*Charge remaining (mAh): 64097*
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
*Full charge capacity (mAh): 64097*
Health Information:
Cycle count: 228
Condition: Replace Now
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 352
Voltage (mV): 12396

System Power Settings:

AC Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Automatic Restart On Power Loss: No
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake On LAN: No
Current Power Source: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
GPUSwitch: 2
Battery Power:
System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2
Wake On AC Change: No
Wake On Clamshell Open: Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
GPUSwitch: 2
Reduce Brightness: Yes

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed: No

AC Charger Information:

Connected: Yes
ID: 0x0100
Wattage (W): 85
Revision: 0x0000
Family: 0x00ba
Serial Number: 0x00a00a1c
Charging: Yes

The interesting thing is Charge remaining and Full charge capacity are very high, seems to be very normal. However, the computer cannot stand more than 10 minutes without the power plugged in.

Appreciate your help.

Cheers,

Viet