"service battery" after upgrading to Mountain Lion

Well it has to happen sometime, and when it does, it will happen in an instant. If it says "service battery", then you should get it serviced. Take it to an Apple Store, or buy a replacement online.

Maybe Mountain Lion is better at detecting failing batteries than previous systems.

Try to fully cycle the battery. Use it till it automaticly goes to sleep and then let it sit till the pulsing light stops (totally dead). Then charge all the way without unpluggung. Maybe that will bring it back to life.

There does seem to be evidence that some users batteries are being affected by the installation of Mountain Lion.

Unfortunately, once your battery shows the service message, even reverting to an older operating system doesn't seem to change its condition. It looks like your computer is one of the affected models. You'll need to have your battery serviced, most likely have it replaced... but before you do, zero out your HD and reinstall your old OS.

Don't update to Mountain Lion again until this issue has been resolved by the OS developers at Apple. If you do, you may risk killing your replacement battery, too. Sorry.

The SMC reset helped me. I'm using an early 2011 13" macbook pro. After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I noticed the battery drained so fast and after a while I got the Service Battery message.

I was really about to have it replaced, It's a good thing I had a hard time doing that in my country!

After completely draining and charging my battery and then doing the SMC reset, it went back to normal. 🙂

Today it happened to me too. Service battery notice. Current charge 0% (*huh*, how can it still be running...)

This is already my third battery in my early 2008 MacBook Pro. I have the feeling that:

1. OS X upgrades kill my batteries: I had to replace the battery after upgrading from 10.5 to 10.6 and now from

10.7 to 10.8.

2. The MacBook Pro early 2008 is a very bad series:

- Display "clamshell" has been replaced due to broken LED issue (only half the LED's lighting up after sleep)

- Logic board had been replaced (bad NVIDIA GPU)

-- Both these issues have been solved under Applecare, luckily.

- Battery has been replaced 3 (THREE!) times in 3 years. The average lifespan of a battery is slightly less

than ONE year.

For me - personaly - these issues are really the limit. After being a loyal Apple user for more than 6 years I feel quite disappointed.

I will contact a European Apple "Premium" Reseller this week to see what they are prepared to do.

Since I live in the South of the Netherlands I would have to travel about 180 km to the nearest real Apple Store (Amsterdam). The warranty has long expired, so perhaps now is the time to stop wasting money on repairs and buy a cheap € 400 laptop on linux instead of another € 139 battery...

I really, really hope that the Service Battery issue is a (bad) joke and an update of OS X will solve the issue.

One reply to my own post.

Apple: I am open for suggestions and willing to try out anything. My life and job depends on my MacBook Pro.

CountPollen wrote:

One reply to my own post.

Apple: I am open for suggestions and willing to try out anything. My life and job depends on my MacBook Pro.

You will need to tell Apple

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

This is simply a User to User Forum, with others like yourself trying to help resolve each others issues.

Cheers

Pete

Having read a post about resitting the SMC on another forum and also on Apples Web Site, I am now getting the service battery error message.

I'm not 100% certain how well my battery is doing because it wasn't doing well before I reset the SMC anyway so I had to do that once I found out about that.

My warrenty is about to run out this month so I am wondering would Apple replace the battery? I don't mind if the Battery has genuinely worn out as they don't last forever but if an Apple update has caused it to ware out early then I would like to get Apple to replace it.

Looks like the warrenty ran out at the end of August. I might still go to an Apple store anyway to find out more.

I may be after a new Mac soon anyway as I could preferably do with a ligher one for travelling and having owned an iPod Touch, which overall I like, I'm not keen on getting an iPad. No unix shell available as far as I know.

Just happened to me - doubt it's a coincidence since I upgraded to Lion too-this upgrade has been very destructive - doesn't seem fair to have to afford a new battery because I upgraded...

Coincidence.

Hi marcb08852,

Personally I solved the issue. Im my case I think it was caused by an older version of Onyx.

Try this:

1. reset pram (Ctrl + Option + P + R) on boot
2. Install new version of Onyx and perform maintenance scripts and repair permissions
3. reboot

System should be fine then.

What I noticed though is that after I had solved the issue, battery quality had decreased from 97% to 91% max. charge. That is quite dramatic...

Goog luck!

If you can't solve your issue: contact Apple store or reseller.

If your battery is younger then 1 year you can get a new one under guarantee.

Contrary to what some people believe, this is NOT a coincidence. And, Apple Support doesn't moniter any of these forums to try to indentify troubleshooting issues. In fact, getting them to acknowledge a new issue that is not known to them, but IS known to the rest of Google, is ridiculously difficult; oftentimes, requiring direct and repeated requests to talk to 2nd level support who are just as often surprised that 1st level support hasn't heard of the issue before and is easily able to troubleshoot.

The Apple Store's solution is either to charge you for a replacement part (ridiculously expensive) or replace the part for free (still expensive because the cost will be passed on to consumers one way or another). I wonder if it really is easier and more cost effective to do it the way they are rather than actually fix the hardware or push a software fix in an update. It's certainly not an integrity-driven way to conduct business (much evidence to support this despite the marketing and in-crowd style following).

That all being said:

==>>The common factor is the Mountain Lion upgrade + the sudden "Service Battery" notification<<==

- I am getting a "Service Battery" notificiation ONLY AFTER upgrading to Mountain Lion.
- I can charge my battery to 100%. But, the adapter charge light or green light turns completely off after awhile. I have to knock the contact and the light turns back on (either green if fully charged or orange as it charges). BUT the "Service Battery" notification is still on.

- I reset the SMC, but that turned my fan on perpetual high, slowed my system, my keyboard dimmer wasn't functioning, and there was an "X" in my batter icon. So... I reset it again, and back to normal. Still with the "Service Battery"

- I have access to a newer model adapter with a different style connecter. I have put the old one in my laptop case for if/when I have to take my lappie into a store. I'm checking to see if the green/orange light turns off like on the old style adapter. Will take a bit. I'll update/amend this post in the next hour or so, or post a follow up comment if the adapter issue doesn't resolve with the new adapter. This old/new adapter thing may be an adjacent issue and not a cause.

Thank you to PeterMac87 for the link. I will check it out and hope that it gets to the attention of Apple Support. For the number of times I've tried to find such a thing, you'd think they'd make it easier to find. Unless that's the point.