MacBook won’t turn on and says to connect the charger which is actually plugged in.

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Level 1

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MacBook won’t turn on and says to connect the charger which is actually plugged in.

Hello, does anyone have any tips for a MacBook Pro that won’t turn on? When turning on the symbol appears which says you need to charge the laptop and then the screen goes blank and turns off. However, the charger is plugged in and I’ve tested the charger on other products and it seems to be working fine. This happens about every two days and coming up to uni deadlines I’m a bit stressed to say the least. When the laptop finally repowers after between an hour to 8 hours the battery is usually around 40% indicating that there was no loss of power in the first place.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 21, 2021 7:37 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,578 points

Apr 21, 2021 7:17 PM in response to ljohnstone54

What is the exact model of your laptop and version of macOS? You can get this information by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About This Mac".

ljohnstone54 wrote:

When the laptop finally repowers after between an hour to 8 hours the battery is usually around 40% indicating that there was no loss of power in the first place.

Is the charger plugged in for an hour before it powers on? Then that 40% would indicate the laptop had drained completely and charged to 40% before powering on.

A lot of times the laptop may be powering on, but perhaps not booting, or perhaps there is no backlight or video on the Display. It can be difficult to tell the difference on the Retina laptops as there are no indicators. The best indicator is pressing the Caps Lock key to see if the Caps Lock LED lights up which indicates the laptop booted to the login screen.

What is the condition of your battery? Option-click on the battery icon on the menubar.

Have you tried an SMC Reset if you have an Intel Mac?

Try running the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.

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Answer 2

ljohnstone54 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 26, 2021 12:39 AM in response to HWTech

Hello,

thanks for your reply. The caps lock is a good trick I will remember that!

luckily I managed to get a lift to the Apple store (I don’t live that close) and they looked at my laptop very quickly. They said it was an operating system issue that they have now corrected. Thinking about this now it seems to make sense as it started happening when I updated to big sur (sorry I am only noticing the correlation now).

thank you for your advice. It made me feel a little better when I was quite stressed.

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MacBook won’t turn on and says to connect the charger which is actually plugged in.

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