Macbook Air Charging Issues

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Macbook Air Charging Issues

Hello,

I purchaed my Macbook Air back in August'11. I am having some issues with charging the laptop and am not sure if it is the laptop or the charger. This has actually initially occured the first week I used the MBA, however it seems to be happenning more. The below is what I experience.

- When MBA is turned off I will plug in the charger, and the charger light (green or orange) will not turn on. If I leave it like this the MBA will not charge, hoever when I notice this and unplug it from MBA and plug it in again, it will usually turn green, then orange and charge normally.

- Sometimes when MBA is turned off and I plug in, the green light will turn on, and all of a sudden turn off in the middle of charging, and so my MBA will not fully charge.

- When MBA is on, I plug in, and it seems to be charging just fine (it even says on upper right of screen that it is charging) but then once in awhile i will look and the light on the charger will be off....and if I look on upper right of screen it will say "Not Charging" Again, if i unplug then plug in again it starts charging again just fine.

Can anyone shed some light on this if they have experienced the same thing? This doesn't happen all the time, it seems pretty random to me.

I know I should probably bring it in, but I'm curious if it sounds like it is the charger or the laptop itself (hopefully not). I probably should have asked about it during the first week, but now that it is 3 months later, am I still covered in some way?

Thanks

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 23, 2011 5:24 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 23, 2011 8:52 PM in response to vongdn

Part of standard operating procedure where charging problems are evident, but it appars the adapter itself is working, is to suspect the System management Controller is at fault. In many cases, resetting the controller restores functioning.

Here is an Apple Tech article that describes the situation and process for possible resolution.

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Answer 2

vongdn Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2011 1:33 PM in response to SP Forsythe

Thanks, this seems to have worked, and the charger has been working fine the past couple of days. Curious though, what is the SMC and what does it do? I read the Apple Tech article, but it doesn't say much in terms of what exactly it is.

In addition, are there actions I can take to avoid this issue again in the future?

Thanks

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Answer 3

carl wolf

Level 6

14,625 points

Nov 27, 2011 1:23 AM in response to vongdn

The tech article describes specifically what portions of the computer are affected by the SMC.

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Answer 4

Nov 27, 2011 3:39 AM in response to vongdn

The SMC is a chip in the computer that manages the power in the computer by monitoring and controling various hardware components (backlights, fans, battery charging, that little led that flashes slowly on Macbook Pros when they are asleep, etc). My guess is that it is an Apple-specific chip. You can think of it like a special-purpose, low-power CPU. See this article for a bit more info about the SMC.

http://www.digitalsurgeons.com/blog/technology/narcoleptic-macbook-randomly-slee ping-try-an-smc-reset/

I don't think there is anything you can do to avoid it happening again - problems of this sort seem to happen occasionally. Apple releases updates to the SMC code every once in a while when they identify problems and come up with a fix. If you notice the same sort of problems again - reset the SMC and see if that fixes it.

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