Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

Way to many people are reporting this to just be failed batteries unless we all got them form the warranty program at the same time. I rather think its an issue with the upgrade.

Note that the KB fix did not help my machine so this needs more trouble shooting.
Any help would be great.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Sep 1, 2009 5:28 PM

Reply
1,559 replies

Sep 2, 2009 3:07 PM in response to Allan Jones

I will find a link to it. The KB just has you reset the SMC by powering off the machine removing all power and holding the power button for 5 sec.

As an update I have loaded an external hard drive with 10.5 Leopard and booted the hardware from the known clean OS. No issues reported on the battery it shows 'fair' in the system profiler under Leopard while it shows 'Service Battery' under Snow Leopard.

Support had me reload the Snow Leopard OS last night, the issue remains.

Under Snow Leopard I am able to watch the battery go from 100% to 50% in less than 5 min. No issues under Leopard.

Message was edited by: Bluesummer

Sep 3, 2009 2:46 AM in response to Bluesummer

Didn't help me... 😟

I have tried calibrating the battery, resetting PRAM (holding command + alt + P + R at boot time), and now resetting SMC.

This is an almost 2-year-old MacBook Pro 3,1 - iStat pro widget says battery health is 70% after 207 cycles. Depending on what I do it still lasts 2-3 hours (which is OK for its age, I think.)

Cheers,
Randy

Sep 4, 2009 9:57 AM in response to Robert Newton1

I have a ticket in with Apple engineering but they say up to 5 days. Only known fix I have currently is to downgrade your OS.

I did this with out killing off my Snow Leopard Install in the following way.

I have an external 320 GB USB drive.
In Snow Leopard I partitioned the disk so it could be a boot disk.
Booted with the Leopard (10.5) DVD and installed Leopard on the external disk.

If I boot off this external disk by holding option on boot and selecting it, no problems with the battery.

So I am running off this external drive as needed till a fix is available.
NOTE it will mount your main drive so you have access to your files.

hope this helps

Sep 6, 2009 7:09 AM in response to blieux

Since installing Snow Leopard, my MacBook Pro is experiencing the same problems generally described above... Fluctuating remaining battery time and fluctuating battery health as well as the Service Battery message. All was fine under Leopard, getting 4-5 hours on a 76% and ~200 cycles battery for my regular workload including word processing, browsing and listening to iTunes, after 2,5 hours of minimal browsing and standby the system goes into sleep mode.

MacBook Pro Battery 'Service Battery' after Snow Upgrade

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.