My battery is not charging at all.

I'd love to know the science behind it, but I don't.

If anyone knows, do tell.

Honestly it sounds like your shorting the connection between the MAGsafe connector and the battery, its almost like taking a paper clip amnvd jumping two jump points on a motherboard. The only problem is that the jump points are design to simply cut or allow the flow of electricity to one specific component on the device. What you are doing is causing a massive uncontrolled short that through sheer luck you haven't fried your macbook MAGsafe connector or worse the motherboard. It might be a neat trick but you are risking complete destruction of your MacBook by doing this.

Why your battery is not holding a charge is simple because the cells in the battery are dead from either constantly having your battery plugged in or the simple fact that its just old. What your doing to the battery is known as balancing or cell matching. This is a process that is using done only on the battery and not threw the device itself, and what happens is when this is done the battery is temporary overloaded to realign the + - cells, the only problem with this is the process breaks done the cells themselves. This make the charge not last as long and the iminate life of the battery to shortening even further, so you will still need to get a battery soon.

So basically, keep your charger plugged in to use your MacBook until you can buy a battery off of amazon to replace it yourself. They have youtube videos on how to do it, its not hard.

Well, months later, all is still well on this end.

Congratulations you got extremely lucky, but doing what your talking about is not going to work for everyone and might permantly damage there MacBook, this making you the responsible one for giving them an expensive paper weight. Where did you find this fix or how did you come to the conclusion that what you did would actually work???

In response to WHBower & aluminum foil trick: I tried this too out of desperation. Though mine didn't snap, crackle and pop. I left it in for about 3 seconds and when I took it out, the foil had taken the shape of the magsafe port. I tried plugging it back in and booting the computer back up.... To no avail. It still is not charging. I have two batteries, so I know it is not the battery itself.

When the power cord is connected, there is an orange light like it is charging, but the software status says "unable to charge battery".

I do remember that I dropped my laptop bag shortly before this problem started happening. From a height of the driver's seat in my car (~3 feet). Maybe something broke in the process?

I'll try the foil trick again in a little bit and report back. In the meantime, does anybody else have any ideas of what may be wrong with mine?

Indications are there is damage to the logic board or if lucky only some piece attached to it, & if that's all, hopefully would cost less than a repaired logic board.

There are companies that are set up to repair various problems with Mac portable logic boards, resoldering, and that is more likely the kind of repair yours needs. You can call or email some of the more reputible ones to ask what their procedures are to send in a Mac portable for a testing and a repair quote. A few will send you a box and arrange for FedEx or another co to pick it up. wegenermedia is one of those who fixes any mac portable.

A cross section of similiar questions and answers online can be found in this search result link: https://www.google.com/#q=dropped%20MacBook%20won%27t%20charge

So a hardware repair that may include replacing damaged parts, is a likely outcome to cure a MacBook that will not charge after being dropped from several feet height to a hard surface. If the very long-shot magic of sparking aluminum foil melting across the power port contacts won't do it, it's time to seek a professional.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Hello all. looks like it's been almost a month since any activity on this issue, but i wouldn't have looked up something like this unless i had the same issue. I have a MacBook Pro, it may be a 2008 or 2009, not sure. anyways, almost the same issues going on here. my orange/green charging light on the MagSafe went out about five days ago. thought my supply went bad so i bought another. well that doesnt appear to be the case either. I have looked through other stuff already, tried an SMC rest but not even sure if it worked and cannot find anything on resetting the PMU. Are there any other options to try? The only other option i see is to get another battery as previously stated in some of these replies. My Mac is sealed, will i be able to replace it myself?

Thanks for your help in advance.

I just took a wet rag and cleaned the port that the charger plugs into the computer. Fixed the issue of not charging

I had this problem, !! here is my story...

I bought a laptop on eBay just an old clunker but a nice machine.. so I updated the system to Yosemite and transferred my data from my iMac.. all seamed OK. I had it plugged in most of the time so I can't remember how it charged.. then I decided to buy a new battery, just because it was old so I get a new battery from eBay.. and updated to el captain.. now the laptop won't charge and slowly worked its way to 0%.. so I figured it was because it was an after market battery..bugger.. anyway i sent it back and bought an Apple battery, came with 50% charge... still no charging!! made its way to 0% as well.

OK it must be the laptop, send this battery back too, find the old battery in the trash, and sell the whole thing for parts on eBay.. Yes I lost a few hundred bucks here....But I still need a laptop.. so back on eBay.. I found a Nice macbook pro.. a fair bit more money but I need it.. so I upload el Capitain and transfer my data.

Same problem... Not charging!! and this is completely different machine!!

I should mention that I did all the resets and suggested solutions nothing worked on either machine. Just won't charge,

So I figured its probably not El Captain or there would be more references to it.. so it must be my data thats corrupt. Before I re install everything one step at the time I just try the guest user account, so I restart and log in as guest... now suddenly the charger is orange... so I log out and in as My self... still orange, and the menu says charging, it has charged its way to 100% and is happily sitting there. I have learned a lot in this process, first.. never assume..

a new user account can fix many problems.. I once had a printer that would crash photoshop constantly, and I fixed it by creating a new user!!

If your battery isn't charging, just try and restart and log in as guest... what do you have to loose??

Peter

PS. Get coconut battery app... its great for troubleshooting!