Q: Macbook Air - Intermittently Charging , Now not at all

Thank you o' wise poster of the hair dryer trick! It works! Love ya! Mean it!

Thanks, and glad it worked!

Same for me. Charging started to go intermitent sometime around 15 months after purchase. Now it's completely dead. Big deception with this first Apple's experience. I paid a premium price for what I expected to be a premium product, but with that situation 18 months later and no more warranty, I looks to me like a weak investment.

We miss Steve I guess.

Crap!

Simon A.,

Montreal

What a joke.  My first Apple computer a MBA and I can't charge it.  I can't believe a company like Apple with all there money has not fixed this.  I read all the posts and I warmed up the charger in my hands for a few minutes and I can't believe thats what it took to get it charging.  So I have to pull out my night stand and unplug it, then warm it up to get it to work.  What year is this?  I cant believe how much I paid for this and I have to warm up the charger.  I had already gone into the store, they were zero help, but very nice, but had nothing for me.  And I find the problem on an apple disscusion board.  But maybe with Spring approaching we will have some warmer weather and I'll be set till next winter.  Apple fix it NOW.

I've been having this same problem with the cord light not coming on when connected, for no apparent reson. Totally randomly. I'm in Arizona, so it's not THAT cold here. Probably mid 70s. Anyhow, I couldn't get it to work because I accidentally unplugged it. Which caused it to lose its "sweet spot." While reading the boards, I took the white block and held it in my hands. After about a minute it just randomly came on. Orange light pops back on. So warming up the block corrects the issue. However, give me a break. How did no one at Apple ever catch this? I'm assuming they're just going to ignore this and move on to the next model like it never happened. This cord is so awkward and fussy that it was the only negative from day one. I'm hoping they ditch this design completely and come up with something worthy of the brand.

I tried charging again today with no luck.  My house is 70 degrees inside.  So I held the charger in my hand for about 30 seconds while breathing hot air on it 4 times, plugged it in and its now charging.  I don't remember seeing those instructions in the manual. So it just needs a jump start every time like an old car.   Thanks Apple.

UPDATE:

After a few weeks with the new battery and IO board my MBA is now charging correctly and consistently. It took about 2.5 weeks and now it seems to charge correctly everytime on the first shot.  I have tested this with 4 different charges and I am seeing great results everytime.

Also, I have done some testing in the basement @ 55 degrees leaving two of the charges down in the cold and they have both been charging 1st time.  I cannot explain why you need to warm up the charges because I did as well but as I noted in an earlier post I have been doing my tesitng with 4 seperate chargers and i was able to duplicate the issue before my battery and IO board swap out and had the same results as everyone else.

I dont know the ins/outs of the MAC but perhaps IO Board is sensing a false full charge or something.

If someone else is under warranty go into the Mac Store and demand a new battery and IO board and see if you are seeing better results, I didnt for the first week so I dont know if there was an update or something released but I am having expected results at this time and I have the same power supplies as before.

GOOD LUCK.

Thank you for your post.  I will go in and demand that they replace something.  My MBA charged fine for 2 or 3 months.  Then for the last month I noticed it wasnt always charging but did not think much about it untill this last several days when it stopped altogether.  Then reading these posts I found that warming it a little would get it to work.  I think there is a problem with the charger that gets worse over time.  I will go in Monday to Apple and post what they do about it. 

I've been facing a similar problem.

I've found that actually shutting down my MacBook Pro makes it charge in one go.

I first kill all applications, then shut down tha Mac.

After that it works for a couple of days.

I think it has to do with how many applications I've got up and running in the background.

C

Same problem with my MacBook Air. This was happening around 4-5 months ago but went away after a day or two. Now this problem has come back. It's been 2 days since I was able to get any light indicators on the magsafe.

This is a serious problem!

Crazy, but the blowdryer trick worked. Very hi-tech! However it is now only recharging to 99%, so the icon never goes to 'full' but stays on the 'recharging' symbol. Not sure how good this is for the battery.

Warming up the power brick definitely fixed the issue of my laptop not charging.

I had the problem previously and it went away but then came back and refused to charge until I heated it up. I hope I don't have to do this every time. :/

I too had this exact same problem, but heating up the power brick worked! Please improve your products APPLE, this is a bit silly.

After heating up the charger for a few weeks to charge I finally went in to the Apple store. I brought in the old charger and they tested it and it didn't work. Apple ran diagnostics on my MBA and ten minutes into the test my old charger started working, but they agreed the charger was bad. He said he had never heard about or seen that problem. I told him about the discussion board about this problem. He said it is just a drop in the bucket compared to how many are out there. I think they are probably built to fail just after the warranty is up but a few fail early. Anyway the new one works like its supposed to, for now.

So far the charger is working after blow-drying the brick three days ago (ridiculous!). But now it doesn't seem to jive with the indicator icon, which only went to 99%, then yesterday only to 98%, now it says 100% but the image is still the little 'charging up' fork, not the solid black battery. So what is it really telling me? something's out of whack. Ryan, not sure what you meant about the drop in the bucket...you mean this problem, other problems, or discussion topics? Because I wonder how (and if) Apple gets the info that we're all blow-drying our chargers?