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

I'll also throw my 2 cents in.

Just a day ago I was curious about what my battery life was, so I checked coconutBattery and it told me I had about 90% of my battery capacity left.

Just today, I got the "service battery" message and it said I had about 75% capacity left. I find it quite odd that over the period of a day my battery just magically dropped 15% in capacity. I'm going to err on the side of a definite issue with Snow Leopard.

reporting back again

my battery reporting has been quite erratic

sometimes max capacity reported by SL as 2900 and "service battery"

Then, I noticed that my MBP would operate at 00:00 and showing 0%
so, I decided to see how long it would go at that rate
It went for about an hour in that state, running video too and the fans were going at a pretty high rate towards the end
The MBP then shut down without any warning notices.
I let it stay that way for about 30 minutes and then connected it to power.
Used normally for a work day - it took about 2 hours to charge to "100%"
then worked for about an hour and change before the battery gave the "on reserve" warning

Then reconnect to power until charged a bit while working.
Then went to lunch, disconnected from power/sleeping MBP for about an hour
then reconnect to power for rest of day
then sleep from 6pm to 9:30pm reconnect to power and then checked the System Profiler

Now - reported as follows:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0003
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 102a
Hardware Revision: 0400
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 3340
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 5153
Health Information:
Cycle count: 89
Condition: Normal
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 952
Voltage (mV): 12147

weird stuff

My Macbook Pro is only 1 year old - and after I Upgraded to Snow Leopard, if my laptop is not plugged in the computer does a hard shut down after about 20 minutes. I know it is not the battery - the battery is at about 80% when it happens. I see a lot of people are having this issue - I hope Apple resolves this soon - my friends that own PC Laptops are having a field day with this!!!

I seem to have noticed this as well. As for the theory of just a bunch of bad batteries at the same dime due to odds and not software. I will toss out this fact, I can boot in the old OS 10.5 and have NO issues. That simple fact tells me that its 100% software driven. Now another factor at play is new service messages and new thresh holds for warnings in the new OS and this could be the issue. The problem I really have with this whole this is the machine runs hotter and shorter in the new OS then the old by hours.

** Note that on the side of the odds a lot of us may have recived batteries under the recall at about the same time not to long ago and be part of the same batch. I don't know this to be a fact **

*I hope the techs I am working with understand that being a tech for 20 + years I am trying to help them with this issues and I am far from a hater of Apple.*

I have put a lot of time and effort into installing the OS 4 + times, running stats, etc. I really truly want to see the system get better.

My tip for you all please take a look at all my posts in this thread as they do have tips that may fix some of your issues. I notice some variables in some of the posts so try this first but plz plz plz call Apple if you still have the problem you get 90 days of free phone support with SL.

1. Reset the SMC
2. Recalibrate your battery
3. Reinstall the OS clean {steps are in my last post}
-- I know 3 is a drastic step that have found issues with services (you can validate this in your error logs) that keep crashing and restarting. A lot of this had to do with the printer subsystem overhaul. Old Software can be causing a high burn on the system. **Make sure you have a backup **
4. Apply all the patches to all of your OS & Software.

None of these things will hurt your machine if anythign it may run a little better than before. I know it takes a lot of work but it may pay off for you and save you the 130$

I will note as said in other posts none have work for me thus far, but some have reported success.

Keep the faith some of these things take time.

cheers m8's

Now after using the battery in the supposed recovered state - it has devolved back to "service battery"

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: Sony
Device name: ASMB012
Pack Lot Code: 0003
PCB Lot Code: 0000
Firmware Version: 102a
Hardware Revision: 0400
Cell Revision: 0303
Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 1645
Fully charged: No
Charging: Yes
Full charge capacity (mAh): 3031
Health Information:
Cycle count: 89
Condition: Check Battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 848
Voltage (mV): 12285

never heard so many problems about battery in PC. I am a new Mac user, must I go back to PC? Snow Leo is clearly far from good. You ought return to Leo. Someone repeat to me why I got a Mac?

Please forgive me for asking, but where does it give you the "service battery" message. I just got my Mac Book Pro and all seems well!!

Best Regards,

"where does it give you the "service battery" message"

Click the battery icon on your menu bar (top right). It should tell you how full the battery is as well as options as to how you want your battery status displayed (percentage, time, or icon only). It is this battery menu that will also say "Service Battery" or similar if there is an issue with it. If it doesn't say anything like that, then your battery is fine

Thanks much for the reply. On that same note what about the temperature, what is an acceptable temperature? I'm always in a cool environment and would like to know at what temperature I should start to get worried. I could fry an egg on that thing, again, I've been doing a lot of benchmarking and really stress testing this thing with Applications like Blender, Maya, etc..

Best Regards,

I've had the same problem since installing snow leopard and finally found an answer which may apply to some other people. For quite a while I had noticed that the light on my MagSafe adapter didn't always come on; I'd have to jiggle it to get it to go green then amber to charge the battery.

Last night I found this article, support.apple.com/kb/TS1713, referring to the pins at the end of the adapter. It seems they can get stuck in the wrong orientation so that the adapter doesn't connect to the mac correctly. I did the trick of pushing them with the fingernail and, behold, the amber light came back on and the battery is fully charged this morning: 4510mAh out of 4455 at a cycle count of 175. Not bad. Even better the 'Service Battery' message if GONE.

Conclusion: 10.6 has a better battery condition check but it's still not good enough to tell you if the problem is with the battery or the power adapter.

Hope this helps someone.
Dicty

Whoops, that should have been 4455mAh out of 4510.
Dicty

Good call on the extra steps to try. Again can't hurt to clean up the connections with the power supply etc. I will update today if I get new info have an appointment at the Apple store they want to run more detailed diagnostics on my machine.

Lets hope we can find something that helps everyone.

So I have (hopefully) an end to the story after the Apple store.

The tech at the Apple store was able to run at test on the battery from a firmware boot they have available to rule out the OS. This test proved with out a doubt the battery on my machine was bad.

While I can't say that I am 100% SL does not have issues with its power subsystem at this point (more testing needed with the new hardware).

I can say 100% that bad hardware was at a minimum one variable, and now with a new battery will be ruled out.

On a personal note, I have to say I have never left an Apple store unhappy with the service and this AM was not exception. Their is a reason I am a fan and the support is one of them. I feel that's saying something from someone who has been a service tech for almost every major IT company at one time or another.

I am considering this issue fixed at this point, and that it was a combination issue for me of bad hardware + excessive broken background processes associated with the OS upgrade and 3rd party software.

New Battery + Clean OS install (info on how to do that above) = FIX

I encourage all of you to follow the steps above and if the problem persists contact Apple.

cheers all,

Sorry guys, but I needed to get this resolved before next week as I need to have a workable solution.

I bought a new battery from the Apple Store and the issue has gone away.

I am about to decide if clean install Snow Leopard or clean install just Leopard, to be honest. There is still an issue if we need to do clean installs, so to me that clearly proves there is an issue with the OS upgrade, how much proof do we need??

I believe a new battery is just an eventual fix, as the new battery will run down fast in the next few months, just the feeling I have, Snow Leopard consumes much more battery, and makes laptop hotter (probably just due to the higher consume), that combined with semi-wasted batteries (probably most of us have a year or year an a half laptops) may be the whole issue.

Random shutdowns I think can be due to the fact that swollen batteries (due to high temperatures or faster wasting) make bad connection, I can confirm mine looked a bit swollen just before got a replacement.

Jose.